Brad and Nancy Allen, A Plus Cattle Co., have cowmen and cow women in their families for at least 3 generations back. They have been in the cattle business for about 30 years. Located west of Stephenville, Texas, A Plus Cattle Co. runs about 175 commercial pairs on approximately 1500 acres of coastal bermuda grass and cultivated land.

In the past, the ranch had a registered Angus herd of 300 cows. Their present commercial operation has retained some of those super genetics. Every cow is tagged with visual and electronic identification tags. Every calf is tagged, weighed and banded at birth. The Allens utilize different color tags for heifers and steers and the tags are ordered so they will organize in alpha numeric order.

Along with the cattle business, they raise and sell coastal bermuda hay and also own a wholesale nursery, primarily pecan trees and native shrubs.

Since purchasing CattleMax software in 2007, the Allens have now utilized the program through two complete spring calving seasons and feel they are getting closer to their goal of being able to objectively measure productivity in their herd. They say, "We are beginning to build enough data to make good culling decisions and retain the best animals by being able to capture a complete history on each individual animal."

Nancy, who works with CattleMax the most, says she utilizes the Customizable Lists in CattleMax CS to make reports needed for their operation. She also uses Herd Update for recording vaccinations, moving the cattle from pasture to pasture. "It is so fast and easy," she says. One of the features which makes the Customizable Lists so user friendly is that we can select the items we want to show in the report and put them in the order in which we want to see them, Nancy comments. The Pasture Summary is the report used most often, printed out weekly enabling the Allens to keep an accurate count of animals in a particular pasture.

Before purchasing CattleMax, recommended to the Allens by their Allflex tag representative, their records were kept on "several overloaded clipboards." "We, in turn, just recommended CattleMax to a purchaser of 25 of our cow-calf pairs who was just starting out in the cattle business," says Nancy.

The Allens say CattleMax software helps make those tough decisions easier when you have the data and history to quantify objectiveness in culling cows or keeping heifers in their cattle operation. "CattleMax is our new best friend and silent partner!" say the Allens.