A Zebu ranch dropped Excel and now runs its cattle operation from the pasture

The business

A registered Zebu cattle ranch, with 54 animals between breeding cows, bulls, recipients and calves, and a serious breeding program: fixed-time AI, embryo transfer and donors. All the information —pedigree, weigh-ins, pregnancy checks, calvings, vaccines— lived in an Excel file that was opened on the home computer and updated from memory after coming back from the pasture.

The problem

The Excel file stored data, but it didn't answer questions. To find out something as basic as "which cows are due for a pregnancy check this week?" you had to read row by row and do the math by hand.

• 17 different types of entry (weigh-in, pregnancy check, insemination, calving, vaccination, weaning…) mixed into columns that kept growing out of control.
• Everything important was mental math: days of gestation, expected calving date, average daily gain, days open, whether the cow was already due for dry-off.
• The fixed-time AI (FTAI) synchronization protocols —which have steps on day 0, 8, 10, 14 and the diagnosis— were kept in a notebook and in memory. A step that goes past its date ruins that cow's cycle.
• Pedigree was traced by looking for the dam's brand by eye on the same sheet.
• The ranch's expenses were kept separately: in another Excel file, in loose receipts or simply in someone's head.

What I built

A web system of the ranch's own, which opens on a phone out in the pasture with a single shared password, with nothing to install.

Each animal's record. You note what happened —"weighed 320 kg", "came up pregnant", "calved a heifer"— and the system works out the age, current weight, daily gain, reproductive status, days of gestation and expected calving date on its own. The pedigree stays linked: from a cow you get to her dam, her sire and all her offspring with one tap. When a calving is recorded along with the calf, the calf is created automatically and stays attached to the dam.

Synchronization protocols, on autopilot. Both fixed-time AI and embryo transfer in recipients. You pick the cows in the batch, set the Day 0 date and the system schedules every step with its date. Each step shows up in the alerts on the day it is due, gets marked as done, and that records the event in the animal's record without writing anything twice.

Weigh-ins from a photo of the notebook. The ranch hand keeps writing the weights down by hand in the corral, as always. Then someone takes a photo of the page and the AI reads each line, recognizes which animal it belongs to and shows a table with the previous weight and the daily gain. It flags a weight that doesn't add up —a sharp drop or an impossible gain— and saves nothing until it is confirmed. Whatever it can't read stays pending; it isn't lost.

The herd's reproductive status on one screen. How many are pregnant, bred but unconfirmed, open or in a protocol; the upcoming calvings; the days open; and which recipient is carrying the embryo from which donor.

Semen straw inventory. Using a straw on a cow deducts it from the inventory and records the insemination in her record, in a single step.

Adding an animal from its registration. You upload the registration document from the breeders' association and the record fills itself in. The document stays stored with the animal.

Alerts and calendar. An inbox that says what is overdue and what is coming up in the next 7 days: pregnancy checks that can now be done, dry-offs, weanings, overdue weigh-ins, expected calvings, vaccine boosters. It filters by type and by urgency.

Expense and income tracking. Each transaction with its category, supplier, payment method and —where it applies— the animal it belongs to, so you know how much that cow cost. Monthly totals, a breakdown by category, the trend over the last 12 months and an Excel export for the accountant.

And most important: the old data wasn't lost. The Excel file was imported in full at the start: 54 animals and 258 historical records were loaded from day one, so the system was useful from the first minute and there was no need to start from scratch.

The result

• What used to be calculated by hand is no longer calculated. Days of gestation, expected calving date, daily gain and reproductive status come straight out of what gets noted down.
• No protocol step depends on memory. Starting a protocol on a batch of cows automatically schedules all of its tasks, each one with its date.
• 258 historical records migrated without losing anything and without entering them again by hand.
• The weigh-in for an entire batch goes from the notebook to the system with one photo, instead of being typed in animal by animal.
• It keeps growing with the ranch. It started in July 2026 with the records and the protocols, and it hasn't stopped getting improvements since.

What I needed from the ranch

• Meetings to understand how the ranch works and to validate each delivery.
• The Excel file it already had. A single file. There were no forms to fill out and no information to enter again.
• Zero changes to its way of working during the build: it kept using its Excel file until the system was up and running with its own data in it.
• No installation, no new equipment, no in-house support. You get in from the phone's browser with a password.
• The features were delivered one at a time and in order of urgency —first the animals, then the protocols, then the expenses, and later the semen straws, the photo weigh-ins and the reproduction dashboard— so there was something useful working very early on, not at the end.