Customer Success Story - Rocky Oaks Ranch
During the late 1980’s, Stan and Jimmie Jernigan began to look for a small piece of property on which to retire. Stan was retiring from Bell Helicopter as an industrial engineer, and Jimmie was leaving Bank of America after a long banking career.
The Jernigans claim to have started in the Longhorn business "by accident." They found a 25 acre property in Glen Rose, Texas, and in 1993, their neighbors decided to sell their Longhorn cattle. Stan and Jimmie purchased the bull and three cows, and promptly fell in love with them.
With this small start, Rocky Oaks Ranch was born, and eventually purchased an additional 105 acres for the cattle to roam.
Stan and Jimmie said they purchased more cattle, "some good, and some bad," over the next five years. Then, in 1997, they met other Longhorn breeders and began to show their cattle.
This is when they realized they needed to study the breed and learn to cull their herd. They wanted to keep only the best animals and to purchase others to improve their breeding program. To get started, they hired Russell Hooks as a consultant, and have now worked with him for ten years.
They said they were unable to find a herd management program they liked in the beginning, and tried designing their own at first.
"Since we are not expert computer users or programmers, we were totally unsuccessful," they said.
They first saw LonghornMax in 2001 at the TLBAA World Championship.
"We attended the demo that Penny presented and were impressed with the program," they said. "After working with the trial version, we decided to purchase LonghornMax."
The Jernigans have sinced upgraded to each new version of LonghornMax. In fact, the new LonghornMax CS was Jimmie's birthday present.
"It is the best yet," they said. "The pictures work much better with this program. We tell everyone they need it."
In 2004, the cattle of Rocky Oaks Ranch discovered more grass and room to roam, when the Jernigans moved to Cross Plains, Texas. Since then, they have produced six riding steers and a number of show champions.
Today, Stan and Jimmie have been married 51 years, and Stan is an approved judge for the ITLA. They have 60 to 80 head of Texas Longhorns, depending on how many calves there are at any particular time. Rocky Oaks Ranch used a straight Butler bull in the 2007 and 2008 breeding season, and therefore has a lot of Butler genetics in its young cattle, but mostly has blended genetics in their herd.
Recently, Rocky Oaks Ranch added some cattle to the Longhorn Source online listing service.
"We used LonghornMax to put the cattle onto Longhorn Source. It was so easy to do and it puts our cattle where they are easily seen," they said. "It is much better than trying to maintain a web site of our own."
They can be confident about the exposure they are getting due to the Longhorn Source feature that tells how many times each animal has been viewed.
The Jernigans said, "We highly recommend LonghornMax to anyone who wants to keep accurate records."
You can visit The Longhorn Source listings for Rocky Oaks Ranch for a glimpse at their colorful Texas Longhorns.
