John Richardson, a self-proclaimed "hobby farmer" located north of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, has kept his cattle records in CattleMax for four years now, beginning with version 2, and making the transition to CattleMax CS last summer.

His small farm, called "Rosehill", spans 200 acres in the Williams River Valley north of Newcastle.

Richardson says Rosehill is located in a summer rainfall area, experiences mild winters, and has some river flats that run into unimproved ironbark country.

He currently runs 60 breeding cows, with 44 calves on the ground, sired by two herd bulls. The Rosehill herd is primarily Angus-based, with a few cows claiming ancestry to their old family Friesian dairy herd.

"Cows are generally culled from about 13 years and bulls replaced about six to seven years," Richardson says. "Calves are sold locally at auction from six months old as the country does not lend itself to fattening."

He says that prior to CattleMax, Rosehill's records were kept in a spreadsheet, and even a card system before that, which involved a great deal of work.

Richardson made the transition to CattleMax to ease the record keeping burden into something more justifiable for his "hobby farm".

At Rosehill, the two herd bulls are kept with the cow herd year-round, which was not very easy to track with the previous record system.

"With the bulls running with the herd all the time, I find the 'last calving date' feature in CattleMax CS very handy to keep an eye on future calving dates," Richardson says.

He also enjoys the ease of reporting with CattleMax.

He says, "The calving interval reports and offspring details help me determine which cows should be culled. These features save me a lot of time and effort."