Customer Success Story: Sunny Day Shorthorns
Thirty-nine years ago, Alpha and Sheri Gipe became
the third generation to run cattle on land that has
been in the family for more than half a century.
Sunny Day Shorthorns is located in the heart of
California’s central valley in Merced, CA, and is
still operated by the Gipe family.
Tim Whitfield, director of technological
operations for Sunny Day, said, “We run 75 head of
registered Shorthorns and after more than 35 years
in the beef industry, keeping track of herd records
and pedigree history became a real challenge for us.
Now with CattleMax from Cattlesoft, Inc., we have
streamlined our data entry process and have
increased our efficiency.”
Sunny Day chose CattleMax to keep their herd
records two years ago, after using Excel
spreadsheets.
"We did an extensive search for software to
assist us with our herd management,” Whitfield said,
“After numerous trials and still more brochures we
finally decided to go with CattleMax because the
CattleMax program is so easy and so thorough that
Sunny Day Shorthorns won’t need any other program
for years to come.”
Whitfield said he spent six months researching
and sampling record keeping software programs.
“Just when we were about to give up, I saw an
ad [for CattleMax] in Shorthorn Country and went to
the website to download the trial version,” he said,
“I immediately fell in love with the iconic
navigation system all linked and in chronological
order based on the life of cattle.”
Whitfield said Sunny Day ultimately chose
CattleMax for its extensive breeding records and
sire guessing functionality.
“The records take the guess work out of
registration papers. If a bull was turned out and a
cow calves 285 days later, then CattleMax will
automatically figure out the Sire of the calf,” he
said.
“We also like the Semen Tank feature. We have
one giant tank and it is full to the brim and it is
nice to keep an up-to-date inventory of what we
have. CattleMax figures it all out automatically and
every time we use an AI bull in the database, it
takes a straw out of the inventory,” Whitfield said.
Sunny Day also uses the custom reporting
feature in CattleMax to create their own Cow Sort
list, which provides a print out of all of their
active cows and replacements, complete with sire and
dam information, last calf date and tattoo number.
Whitfield suggested that other seedstock
operations using CattleMax should take the time to
enter all of their past pedigree information.
“It is worth it,” he said, “Then you can run a
report on herd sires and dams of the past and look
at their progeny to see if your herd is headed in
the direction of your goals.”
Sunny Day is proud they found CattleMax to
track all of their cattle records.
“CattleMax is an excellent program and it
keeps getting better. There are so many easy to use
features that it is hard to use them all.
Cattlesoft, Inc., has done an excellent job and they
have always responded quickly to any problems that
we’ve had,” Whitfield said.
Sunny Day is also beginning a new enterprise
with Sunny Day Online!, an agricultural website
services firm specializing in ranching and livestock
websites. They even use CattleMax in this new
enterprise to manage their own website.
Whitfield said, “Sunny Day Online! uses
CattleMax on a daily basis for herd records to
publish to the internet. Sunny Day Online! can
actually take a group of cattle from CattleMax and
run the sale catalog generator and get a full report
on that group of cattle, picture and all, and upload
that file to the website.”
For more information on Sunny Day Shorthorns,
visit their website at
http://www.sunnydayshorthorns.com
