Software for calf raisers.
Mule builds intake, growing and placement systems for calf-buying and calf-raising operations: EID capture at purchase, depot costing, and tracking as calves move from the buyer to the grower to the next stop.
What we know about calf raisers.
A calf operation touches an animal more times, and hands it to more different people, than almost any other kind of livestock business. A calf gets bought from a dairy, held at a depot, placed with a contract grower, then shipped on, sometimes to a feedlot, with carcass data coming back from the packer months later. Every one of those handoffs used to have its own record: a buyer's tally sheet, a depot's feed log, a grower's own notes, a packer's spreadsheet, none of them talking to each other.
The result is a familiar problem: no one record holds the whole animal. The buyer knows what he paid, the depot knows what it fed, the grower knows what he was handed, and the packer knows what came back on the rail, and matching those up by hand is a job that eats real time every settlement cycle.
Why a calf raiser picks Mule.
- 01EID capture at purchase with a paired Bluetooth reader, and manual entry when a tag won't read, so every calf is tied to a record from the day you buy it.
- 02Depot costs, feed, replacer, labor, yardage, bedding, spread across the animals actually held, not estimated after the fact.
- 03Grower placements and inventory checks that flag a count mismatch instead of letting a missing calf go unnoticed until settlement.
- 04The whole field app works offline at the depot or the barn and syncs when signal comes back.
What calf raisers usually need.
From calf raisers.
Do your guys need signal to use this at the depot?
No. The field app is built to run offline at the depot or the barn, entries save locally and sync when the device is back in range. That's a requirement we design for from the start, not an afterthought.
Can it capture EID tags when we buy?
Yes, with a paired Bluetooth reader at purchase, and manual entry when a tag won't read or hasn't been applied yet. Either way the record ties to that calf from the day you buy it, not a spreadsheet row someone matches up later.
We're buying from dairies who send us their own spreadsheets. Can you match that against what we're building?
Yes. Matching outside files, from dairies, feedlots or the packer, back to your animals by ear tag is something we build in directly, with unmatched rows held for a person to check rather than silently dropped.
Who owns the purchase, growth and settlement data once it's built?
You do. We build the system for your operation and the data is yours: your purchase records, your depot costs, your grower placements, your settlement history. You can export it or ask for a full handoff at any point.
How does pricing work for something like this?
There's no price list for this kind of build, it's quoted from your actual operation: how many depots, how many growers, what you're already tracking and what's still on paper. You describe the operation, we ask what we need to, and you get a real number in writing.