Not the prettiest of sites, and more of a ‘what might have been’ than anything else, HerdManager was partially developed as a demonstration of the sort of data management that is possible with a ColdFusion-based site, a database and a whole lot of Structured Query Language (SQL) statements.
The functionality to add new records to the herd has been disabled with this restored version! The rest of it (sort of) works.
Farm management is a complex business and, since this prototype was developed in around 2000, things have evolved substantially.
At the time neither the capacity nor the funding existed to turn HerdManager into a fully-fledged product.
It is interesting to think, however, that this idle exercise in how to learn ColdFusion could have turned into something much bigger…
The software we now use at Ascog Farm, the Australian Agriwebb website and application, has raised $ millions in funding and acquired competitors as it has expanded.
It even enables farmers to upload KML boundaries of their ‘paddocks’, or ‘fields’ as we call them in the Northern Hemisphere…
According to a CB Insights page found online, Agriwebb’s 2021 valuation sat at $77.09 million!
What might have been, had Adrian not been so busy with everything else at the time…
