Barnyard Boss keeps what every animal has cost you — feed, vet, the day you bought them — and what they are worth now. So when it is time to decide whether to keep one or sell, the answer is a number instead of a feeling.
Cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, poultry. Works with no signal. No account required.
Carrying costs $356 more than they will make back. What would change the answer →
Every livestock app will show you what your herd is worth. Most of them are lying to you — politely, and with good intentions.
Inventory value is not money. An animal is not income until someone hands you a cheque. Until then they are a cost that keeps growing: feed, minerals, vet, the eight months of winter between now and the sale barn.
So we built the other thing. Every animal carries what they have actually cost you, from purchase or birth forward. Margin is what they are worth now, less what they have cost. That is the whole arithmetic, and we do not round it in your favour.
It means the app will sometimes tell you the animal you like is $180 under water. We think you would rather know in October than find out in May.
Purchase or birth, feed, vet, labour — it all builds up against the individual animal. So “this steer is $180 under water” is a real number, not a farm average. Pens and species are kept apart, because a broiler and a steer are not the same unit.
Cull or carry puts sell-now beside carry-to-spring, with the feed and carry cost over the months between, a recommendation, and what would change the answer. Keep one and it books a review in 30 days, so next month's comparison runs on what actually happened.
Fully offline. Chute mode puts the ear tag at 92 pixels so you can read it at arm's length in the sun. Outdoor mode scales everything up. Hold to talk instead of typing, with gloves on.
“Twenty-one forty for four ton of alfalfa on lot B.”
Becomes $2,140, filed as feed, spread across Lot B — and it tells you what that did to the cost of each head before it posts anything. It knows that “twenty-one forty” is 2,140 and not 21 and 40, and it does not confuse the four ton with the money.
A farm with sixty head is not going to type them in. So it does not ask you to.
Plenty of apps will hold your records for nothing. That part is not worth money any more, so we do not charge for it. What no one else does is work out what each animal is costing you — that is the part you pay for, monthly or yearly, and only if you want it.
| TallyFree | Boss$79/yr | Outfit$149/yr | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keeping the record — free, and never limited | |||
| Any number of head, any species | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works with no signal, anywhere | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Chute mode and outdoor mode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hold-to-talk entry, gloves on | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Weights, treatments, breeding | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Withdrawal dates on the sale screen | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Who entered what, on every record | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plain CSV export and your own backup file | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| No account, no login, nothing held hostage | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cull Calculator — one animal, numbers typed in | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Doing the arithmetic — this is what you pay for | |||
| Cost basis building on every head | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Margin — worth now, less what they have cost | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cull or carry — every animal, from your own records | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| The 30-day review after you keep one | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Profit by pen and by species, kept apart | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Opening basis when you bring in a paper book | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Working animals — own cost, own margin, sold whole | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Year-end statement for you and your accountant | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| More than one person — not built yet | |||
| Up to five people, one outfit — then $25 a year each, to ten | — | — | ✓ |
| Shows a real conflict instead of picking a winner | — | — | ✓ |
| Backup off the phone | — | — | ✓ |
| Control over who sees the money | — | — | ✓ |
Nothing in the top block is ever gated, at any price. The free tier is not a trial and it does not expire — it is the whole record book, for any size herd.
Five people covers a family and a hired hand, which is most places. Beyond that, extra people are $25 a year each up to ten — and the price per person goes down, not up, as you add them. More than ten, or more than one outfit? Email us and we will sort it out. No demo, no sales call.
Thirty days free, then it charges — monthly or yearly, your pick, and you can switch. You pay here, through Stripe, and we never see your card. Stripe emails you before the trial ends and sends a receipt for every charge, so nothing arrives as a surprise.
What you get is a licence key — one long line, pasted once into Settings on the phone you actually carry. It is checked on the handset, which is why Boss keeps working in a yard with no bars, and why we never learn when you opened your own records. Keep the email: pasting the key again is how you move to a new phone.
Cancelling is a link in your receipt, or an email to us. There is no app store in the middle and nothing to hunt for in your phone's settings. Your key runs to the date on it and simply stops renewing.
Adding or dropping people — when Outfit arrives. Add someone mid-year and you pay only for the months left — a sixth person added in July costs about $12.50, not $25, and your renewal date does not move. Drop someone and their seat runs to the end of the year you have already paid for, then your price goes down at renewal. You are never charged for time you did not use, and never billed twice for the same stretch.
If you stop paying, your records stay and the export stays free. Only the arithmetic switches off, and everything you had built up is waiting if you come back.
Today it runs on one phone. There is no account, no cloud, no merging between two people's phones — that is the Outfit tier and it is not built. Which also means the records live on that phone and nowhere else — export them somewhere safe now and then, because clearing your browser data or losing the handset takes them with it. Voice entry uses your phone's own speech recognition where it has it, and a typed field where it does not; it is not a trained farm speech model. Every line you enter is kept, and past months are totalled from those lines rather than stored as a summary — so a year-end statement is your own arithmetic, not a figure the app remembered. Market prices are the ones you enter or a source you name — there is no live feed. And there is no scanning of paper books; that goes to mob entry on purpose.
Coming soon: weight estimates from photos, the one thing that will leave the phone. When they arrive, asking for one sends the photos you take for it, and what you type about the animal (species, breed, age, what is in the picture for scale), over the internet with your licence to our estimate service. The photos and those details, not your licence, go on to Anthropic's Claude AI to be read. We will not keep the photos, and Anthropic's terms do not let it train its models on them. Nothing else from your records goes with them, and the app will say so again before anything is sent.
We would rather you read that here than find it out later.
One animal, eight numbers, and it shows you whether keeping them beats selling this week — with every step of the arithmetic on the page. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, nothing sent anywhere.