NextGen Cattle Co. is headquartered in Paxico, Kansas, and works across nearly every stage of beef production. The seedstock program markets about 800 bulls a year across four breeds, with roughly 800 cows and 500 bulls on the home place at any time, an embryo transfer recipient herd 20 miles away, and cooperator herds carrying NextGen embryos across the country. Another 37 cooperators send bulls in from as far as California, ranging from five-head outfits to hundred-head programs. The company also runs a feedyard with a one-time capacity of about 50,000 head and its own meat company.

Today the seedstock team at Paxico has Breedr on their phones and records as they go - cattle worked through the chute, treatments given out in the pasture, cows calving. The recipient herd and the cooperator herds record into the same system, so data arrives daily from several states at once. DNA collection runs through it too: NextGen sends roughly 10,000 genotypes a year between the seedstock operation and the feedyard, scanning EID and tissue sample units straight into the platform. What used to be reconstructed from memory and paper is now recorded the second it happens.

Clean Records for Four Breed Associations

NextGen's biggest data challenge is that four breeds mean four associations, each wanting different information in a different format. Because records are collected day to day rather than reconstructed later, what goes to the associations is both more complete and more defensible — every entry carries a timestamp the team can point to. Whole-herd reporting has gotten cleaner as well: when a cow leaves, the record shows when and why, instead of the operation paying fees on animals that are long gone.

J Holmes - Chief Procurement Officer

J buys the feeder cattle for NextGen's 50,000-head yard, five years into his time at NextGen after 27 years at Tyson. He tracks conversions, gain, health and carcass results and sends that information back to the ranchers who raised the calves, on the principle that the only way NextGen gets better is if they do.

Bridging tradition and technology

Founded by Ian Wheal, son of a 4th generation cattleman, Breedr is more than just your technology partner. Our mission is to help producers double the commercial potential of their beef, while enriching rural communities & protecting our land for our children’s children.

We will support you to better produce what your customer wants while optimizing the performance of your animals, actively telling the story of your beef to the market to help you secure preferential contracts & investment to grow.