Weaver Ranch is located on the high plains of eastern New Mexico, within sight of the New Mexico-Texas state line. At 4,000 feet elevation, the ranch is on the western portion of the high plateau known as the Llano Estacado (Staked Plain). Willard Heck, Manager, says he gets great satisfaction from having ALL the cow information organized in one place, where, with a few mouse or keyboard clicks, he can look up any detail he wants.

The ranch is a purebred operation producing Mashona cattle, a breed imported from Zimbabwe, Africa in the mid 1990s. Historically, the wealth of many African tribes was measured by their cattle herd. Some of the tribal herds evolved over time into distinct breeds. Such is the case with the Mashona, which is the tribal breed of the Shona people of northeast Zimbabwe, parts of Mozambique and possibly Zambia.

In the mid 1990s, Weaver Ranch undertook, under a strict and never before used USDA germplasm importation protocol, to collect, freeze and import to the U. S., embryos from the top herds in Zimbabwe. The first Weaver Ranch Mashona calf was born in 1997.

Continuing his comments about the Mashona cattle, Heck says the cattle have a strong herding instinct, helping with predator problems both in Africa (lions and hyenas) and the ranch's location in New Mexico (coyotes).

Weaver Ranch currently has about 250 cows in the breeding herd, with an additional 100 yearling heifers and 100 steers. Some of the heifers will be promoted into the breeding herd, and some of the steers will be marketed directly to the consumer as grass-finished beef. There are also about 50 purebred bulls in the herd.

Willard says his best advice to users is to stay current on data entry. "CattleMax cannot give you up-to-date information and analysis if you haven't given it up-to-date data. Because we calve late (starting in mid-May), lately, I'm currently most often using the Offspring button to check on calving history for particular cows."

The cattle records were previously kept with a combination of paper, spreadsheets and an old DOS based cattle records program given to the ranch when they imported their cattle. The CattleMax technical staff was very helpful in getting those records converted into CattleMax. Willard says, "Since importing our Mashona cattle in the mid 1990s, we have kept thorough breeding records, so most of our animals have multi-generational pedigrees going back to their Zimbabwean ancestors. Though we're still getting our feet wet with CattleMax, by far the most important function it serves for us is to consolidate and organize all our cattle data in one place. And, in conjunction with the online backup option and our own offline storage, we can secure its existence should we have a hard drive crash, fire, theft or other calamity."

For more information on Weaver Ranch and Grasslands Charitable Foundation, and Mashona cattle, go to http://www.americanmashona.com