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HerfNet Unveils New World of Marketing Tools

Welcome to HerfNet, the ultimate on-line resource for buyers, sellers, breeders and feeders of Hereford influenced cattle. Sponsored and maintained by the American Hereford Association (AHA), HerfNet offers a totally free, no-obligation advertising venue for Hereford and Hereford crossbred commercial cattle as well as access to the over 3 million animal records in the AHA database. Additionally HerfNet offers you a cost effective way to advertise North America’s premier registered Hereford seedstock via on-line classified ads, sale catalogs or semen catalogs . We appreciate your visit and invite you to discover the wealth of information now at your fingertips. If you’d like to take advantage of our free feeder cattle or commercial female listing call us at 1-866-HERFNET (1-866-437-3638).

100 years of Pedigrees at your PC 

Through the HerfNet system, the American Hereford Association will soon be able to offer 24-hour internet access to its massive database of pedigree information on Hereford cattle. With over 3 million records, the HerfNet database will let you explore the world’s largest cattle registry, track the lineage of any registered Hereford animal, locate the progeny of famous sires and dams, and link the full history of animals in your herd to your online advertising.

Hereford Seedstock Sale Results (added 3/1/01)

This sale report service features an overall average, along with averages for bulls, females, flushes, embryos, commercial females and club calves.  Complete sale reports featuring buyers and individual lots will continue to appear in Hereford World Magazine.  Advertisers who have an AHA Field Manager work their sale are eligible for this free service.  

21^st Century Seedstock Merchandising (added 9/25/00)

Hereford breeders who seek to advertise their bulls and females to the growing audience of on-line shoppers will be able to create, e-mail, advertise and print their own online sale catalogs complete with individual animal pedigree records, photos, real-time EPDs and sellers comments right over the internet. User friendly yet customized to the client, online catalogs offer the ultimate advertising value with literally worldwide exposure and no expensive or wasted mailings.

In mere seconds, buyers can use the system to search hundreds of sale lots and private treaty sale ads for bulls and females that meet their specific performance and pedigree criteria. And with real-time performance data, EPDs for every animal in every catalog are current to the date you view them.

Commercial Female Listing (added 8/29/00)

Offering the most comprehensive source of available Hereford and Hereford crossbred commercial females; HerfNet will be the premier online destination for buyers and sellers. This free listing includes information such as age, breed make up, pregnancy status and location of commercial grade females anywhere in America.

Feeder Cattle Listing

The HerfNet Feeder Cattle Listing Service is the free resource for buyers and sellers of Hereford influenced feeder cattle. It enables any producer, anywhere in America to advertise the availability of his or her calf crop to Certified Hereford Beef feedyards, order buyers, stocker operators and commercial feeders.

AHA launched the system July 15^th to support the special feeder calf sales, ranch-direct sales and video auctions used to trade Hereford cattle. The system is an evolution of several commercial marketing efforts and the Certified Hereford Beef Program built to provide seamless communication between buyers and sellers of Hereford cattle.

"The AHA staff has long served as a communications link between breeders seeking a buyer for their cattle and feeders wanting to deal with load lots of Herefords," explains AHA Executive Vice-President Craig Huffhines. "The HerfNet feeder cattle listing is simply a structured, non-obtrusive means of trading that information."

While the listing serves as the information clearinghouse, AHA isn’t entering the competitive online auction business. Rather the Association is providing the free service of compiling seller information so that Hereford feeder cattle buyers can easily and readily access a database of available calves and yearlings.

"We want feeders to know where, when and how they can procure Hereford cattle," says Jim Williams, AHA Director of Feedlot Operations.

For some producers, the HerfNet feeder cattle listing will be a means to broadcast the availability of ranch direct cattle to a larger audience of buyers. But for others, particularly those producers that aren’t capable of selling entire load lots of uniform calves, HerfNet will eventually serve as both a badly needed means of advertisement and a reciprocal means of alliance building.

"We’ve really encouraged medium and small sized producers to organize and/or support local Hereford feeder calf sales," Williams explains. "By having a HerfNet system, there is now a way for producers to find out what other marketing opportunities exist in their area." For example, we might find that there’s an undiscovered opportunity to pool calves from a certain region or that a local stocker operator can buy the calves he wants right from his backyard."

HerfNet is designed to capture information on all Hereford influenced feeder cattle, regardless of how each producer chooses to ultimately sell those cattle. Producers who market through video auctions, on-line auctions, special feeder-calf sales or regular auction barns are encouraged to list those cattle in advance of their ultimate sale date.

To participate, producers simply phone, fax or mail information about their cattle to the HerfNet operator. The data they provide is entered into a database, formatted, sorted and redistributed to those target feeders and order buyers looking for Hereford influenced cattle. While each producer’s cattle and contact information will be listed on the internet at www.HerfNet.com, that particular technology will be only a part of the HerfNet system. AHA staff is in weekly verbal contact with many of the feedlots that supply Certified Hereford Beef and plans to aggressively market cattle in the HerfNet database to those feeders who can assure that Certified Hereford Beef can grow larger in the future.

Certified Hereford Beef is currently maintaining a weekly harvest of 1,200-1,400 head of Hereford and baldy cattle according to Rob Ames, the program’s Head of Product Marketing. "To enjoy any significant growth we’ve got to rally around our supply channel and give our feeders the ability to deliver 2,000 head of eligible cattle every week in the year."

Even so, the framework of HerfNet allows producers with continental or Brahman influenced Hereford calves to advertise those cattle nationally and for AHA staff to be a better resource to commercial feedyards in the southern plains. "This fall will be a test of how much information we can gather on southern-cross baldy calves," explains Huffhines. Right now we’re probably not a top-of-mind source for those feeders who like the feed efficiency and profitability of those cattle." Since the Hereford breed has such a strong stake in the south, we’ve got to make the HerfNet system and the staff behind it strong advocates for all Hereford influenced calves."

State and regional Hereford associations will be important affiliates of the HerfNet system. The Montana Hereford Association is launching a similar web-based effort that will exchange information with the HerfNet database. "The goal is to maximize the opportunity for a buyer to discover available cattle," according to Tom Courtney, President of the Montana Hereford Association. "If HerfNet and state organizations can mutually promote the same cattle, producers will without question optimize their exposure to buyers."

"With so many successful state-led efforts already in place or in planning, we really need HerfNet to keep up," says Williams.

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