Eleven years ago Scott McAllister had a good idea for the elk industry. He wanted to apply computer software to herd management.
There was only one problem.
“There was no industry,” said McAllister, a Kitscoty, Alta., computer programmer who owns about 100 elk. “There were only a handful of producers in the province.”
But by learning about elk before the species had been approved for domestic production, McAllister was able to carve a niche for himself and has grown with the industry.
He has based both his basement computer business and his elk farm on successfully anticipating growth and demand. The accuracy of his intuition will be tested in a few weeks, when he releases his new herd management computer program.
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McAllister launched his first program in 1987, DOS-based software that was popular but now shows signs of age.
He is a few weeks away from releasing a redesigned program that he said will work for all special livestock. It is designed for Windows 95 and McAllister hopes it will be the best herd management program for the elk industry in North America.
“It’s a pretty comprehensive product management system,” said McAllister, who manned a booth in the trade show at the Saskatchewan Elk Breeders Association annual convention. “We’ve made a lot of effort to make sure people are going to find it easy.”
Profit from the program will depend upon how it is received by elk producers.
“You really don’t know what you’re going to get for revenues. It could be $2,000, or $200,000.”
So far, McAllister has accurately anticipated demand for both elk and the herd management program. Back in 1987, his only connection to elk was through friends raising them on an experimental basis, before the Alberta government approved the industry.
Request from friends
He was a computer programmer for Dome Petroleum in Lloydminster at the time, and his friends asked if he could write a simple program to help them manage their herds.
The program worked and he started marketing it, but in those computer stone-age days, selling the program often meant convincing a farmer to first buy a computer, and that was sometimes difficult.
His dealings with elk producers gave him a sense of the industry, and he decided to jump in. He fenced his quarter section of land and started managing his own herd.
Getting into elk production was possible because of the relatively low capital investment involved.
“You can use a $15,000 tractor and that’s about all you need; something with a bucket so you can haul bales around.”
A quarter section allows him to run as many as 100 elk.
On the side investment
McAllister took the same low-capital approach to his home-based programming business, investing little except “the time between six at night and three in the morning.”
In the last six months he and his partner, Windows programmer Jeff Alexander of Regina, have entered another growing area: the internet. McAllister has set up a website, called Ranchernet, at www.ranchernet.com to promote his programs and provide upgrades and information and links to the elk industry.
While any new product can fly or crash, McAllister said he was encouraged by recent trade shows, including the North American Elk Breeders Association convention in Reno, Nevada.
Producers have been able to sit down and use the program, and so far they have said they liked what they saw, McAllister said.
Warren Ziolkowski, a Yorkton, Sask., producer, said computer herd management programs are basic equipment for any serious elk producer.
“You could never keep track of all your animals,” said Ziolkowski. “After you get over about 10 animals, you’d start breeding brothers to sisters.”
