Shearwell MyFarmWorks is a cloud-based livestock management program. You pay a monthly or yearly fee to use it, and your data is stored in the cloud, meaning you can access it from any device at any time by logging in. MyFarmWorks has many of the same tracking capabilities as AnimalTrakker®, with an additional emphasis on those that benefit cattle farmers, sheep farmers, and large-scale producers.
What Does Shearwell MyFarmWorks Do?
While MyFarmWorks and AnimalTrakker® track many of the same metrics, each has a handful of features that the other doesn’t. They also function differently on a fundamental level, even though they achieve similar results.
MyFarmWorks is a popular and widely adopted software suite, and many of its features cater to large-scale farms and ranches that may need to draft and sort many animals at a time. It interfaces with many of Shearwell’s sorting products, including gates, scales, race readers, and more.
Shearwell MyFarmWorks advertises the following tracking benefits:
- Multiple simultaneous users
- Unlimited stock tracking
- No internet required (to record data)
- Cloud syncing
- Apps on the App Store and Google Play Store
- Individual and batch animal recording
- Comments and reminders
- Animal and event scoring
- On and off-premise animal movements
- Death, birth, and tag tracking
- Sales and purchase tracking
- Report generation
- Animal detail tracking
- Medicine purchase and administration tracking
- Weight recording
- Management groups
- Breeding session recording
- Multi-action workflows
- And more
Note that Shearwell does offer two tiers of its software, and some features are restricted to the more expensive tier.
Head-To-Head Comparison: AnimalTrakker® vs. Shearwell MyFarmWorks
AnimalTrakker® and MyFarmWorks track many of the same metrics, but have distinctly different architectures. We’ve broken down the differences between the two programs in more detail below.
| Feature | MyFarmWorks | AnimalTrakker® |
|---|---|---|
| Simultaneous access | Yes | No1 |
| Unlimited database | Yes | Yes2 |
| Requires the internet | Yes3 | No |
| Free | No | Yes |
| Open-source | No | Yes |
| Mobile friendly | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud-based | Yes | No |
| Multi-species support | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-action workflows | Yes4 | Yes |
| Animal color tracking | Yes4 | Yes |
| Automatic data synchronization | Yes | No |
| Notes and Alerts | Yes5 | Yes |
| Evaluations | Yes4 | Yes |
| Animal movements | Yes | Yes |
| Medicine stock tracking | Yes | No6 |
| Bluetooth capable | Yes | Yes |
| Report generation | Yes | Yes7 |
| Breeding session tracking | Yes4 | Yes |
| Detailed lambing/births | Yes4 | Yes |
| Fostering and surrogacy support | Yes4 | Yes |
| Weaning | Yes4 | Yes |
| Full tag history tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Batch animal recording | Yes | Yes |
| Weight recording | Yes | Yes |
| Custom management tags | Yes | No |
| Management groups | Yes | No6 |
| Registry capability | No | Yes |
| Off-label drug support | ? | Yes |
| Location and ownership separation | Yes | Yes |
| Label printing | No | Yes |
| Pedigree/Genetics tracking | No | Yes |
| Inbreeding calculation | No | Yes |
| Data exchange between members | Yes | No6 |
| Daily rate of gain | Yes4 | Yes |
| Multi-tag tracking | No | Yes |
Notes
1: While multiple people can use AnimalTrakker® at the same time, they cannot make simultaneous changes to the same database.
2: AnimalTrakker®’s database is designed for up to roughly 500,000 animals, but the true size limit is dictated by the processing power of your machine.
3: MyFarmWorks requires the internet to sync your changes, but not to record them.
4: This feature requires the Pro subscription to use with MyFarmWorks.
5: MyFarmWorks’ Notes and Alerts are called Comments and Reminders.
6: This feature is coming soon.
7: This feature is available in the AnimalTrakker® Farm Desktop app.
Price
Shearwell MyFarmWorks uses a flat price model charged yearly or monthly. You can choose between Starter and Pro tiers. Starter gives you most of the program’s functionality, while Pro gives you a few additional tracking metrics. At the time of this writing, Starter costs $25/month USD or $250/year. Pro costs $37.50/month or $375/year. This cost is for the software only, which is compatible with most mobile and desktop systems. MyFarmWorks does offer a 30-day free trial with both pricing tiers.
Note that while Shearwell sells a number of peripheral devices that automate some aspects of MyFarmWorks, they do have an initial purchase cost.
AnimalTrakker®’s software, in comparison, is (and always will be) free. AnimalTrakker® also works with many Shearwell products, including the Nautiz X6 Stock Recorder.
Internet Connectivity
While MyFarmWorks requires an internet connection to make permanent changes to your database, the app will retain any changes locally while you’re without internet access. As such, it does require an internet connection, but not at all times. You can use the software in the field with no internet access as long as you return to an area with internet regularly. You can also use the program through a web browser instead of the app, but the browser version does require an active internet connection.
AnimalTrakker® does not need an internet connection to store data. All changes are made locally on your device. Since AnimalTrakker® does not store data on or sync with the cloud, your data stays safer and is protected from theft or cyber attacks.
OS Compatibility
MyFarmWorks is compatible with both iOS and Android devices through the MyFarmWorks app. The program is also accessible through a web browser on any desktop or laptop computer as long as it has internet access.
AnimalTrakker® is compatible with Android devices through the Farm Mobile app, and it works on Linux, Macintosh, and Windows computers through the Farm Desktop app. Neither Farm Mobile nor Farm Desktop requires internet access to function.
Integrations and Peripherals
AnimalTrakker® and MyFarmWorks both support native Bluetooth connections (as long as the device you’re running the program on can also support Bluetooth). This means you can wirelessly connect peripheral devices to either system.
MyFarmWorks is compatible with Shearwell-branded race readers, scales, and EID wands. It can also be used on the Shearwell Nautiz X6 Stock Recorder, which now comes with a year of free MyFarmWorks Pro access. Shearwell mentions that their system is compatible with a handful of other manufacturers’ peripherals, as well, but they do not specify which brands or which devices.
AnimalTrakker® works with several brands of EID readers, scales, race readers, printers, and other peripheral accessories, including Shearwell’s, and we’re adding more all the time. As long as we can acquire access to the device’s API, we can usually integrate our system with whatever hardware the user wants to use.
File Transferring
Shearwell MyFarmWorks makes transferring data between MyFarmWorks users very easy – you can do it all within the app. MyFarmWorks also allows you to export your data in a .CSV format for easy interpretation. This should make importing data to other programs easier.
AnimalTrakker® also has functionality to export data in a .CSV format. Our desktop app, Farm Desktop, allows you to select the animals you want to see, then export their data as a .CSV. The data is readily accessible in this form, and we’re also in the process of implementing various custom reporting functions to make these exports even more useful.
To learn more about transferring your data between Farm Mobile and Farm Desktop, please see our support site where we explain the process – it’s easy!
Multiple Users
Notably, MyFarmWorks allows multiple users to access and make changes to one database at the same time, as long as they all have an active internet connection. AnimalTrakker®’s local data model cannot do this unless we also connect to the cloud, which we have no plans to do.
We plan to work around this issue with AnimalTrakker® by providing an easy way for you to combine databases via Farm Desktop. This feature is still a work in progress, but it will allow you to merge two or more AnimalTrakker® databases into one. Some of our range farmers choose to do this at the end of a season – combining databases from multiple locations into one as they come in from the range.
Automatic Drafting/Sorting
Because Shearwell manufactures drafting (or sorting) hardware, MyFarmWorks has lots of functionality dedicated to making sorting easier and more automated. It’s designed to work with gates, scales, race readers, EID wands, and more. These automatic sorting systems work best on large farms that need to weigh, sort, or treat high volumes of livestock with little manual intervention.
While AnimalTrakker® supports only manual sorting at this time, we’re working on integrating our system with new peripherals that make sorting as easy as possible. We’re actively communicating with manufacturers who are willing to share their APIs with us, and this allows us to integrate their sorting hardware with AnimalTrakker®.
Management Groups
Shearwell MyFarmWorks has a useful feature called Management Groups. This allows you to sort your animals into groups that you define within the system. You can quickly access all the animals within the group by pulling up or searching for that group. You might, for example, put all of your ewes in one group and all your rams in another, or you might group them by pasture or location.
While this is not a feature that AnimalTrakker® has at this time, it’s one that’s on our radar, and we hope to implement it soon.
Tag Tracking and History
Shearwell MyFarmWorks and AnimalTrakker® take different approaches to tag tracking. While both programs will record a full tag history for each animal, MyFarmWorks only allows one visual tag, one EID tag, and one management tag per animal. You can replace these tags as needed, and MyFarmWorks will remember your changes, but this can prove problematic for farmers with more than one tag of a single type on an animal.
AnimalTrakker® allows you to add as many tag entries to each animal as you’d like, across multiple types. AnimalTrakker® also supports additional tag types that MyFarmWorks does not officially track, including paint brands, tags from other regions, ear notches, tattoos, brands, and more.
Custom Management Tags
MyFarmWorks allows you to add custom management tags to your animals. Each animal can be identified with one custom management tag, and these tags do not have to be unique. The system allows you to search these custom tags later. You can use the custom management tag to denote another form of identification, such as brands, Scrapie tags, ear notches, or otherwise, or you can set them as anything else you’d like to search by.
While AnimalTrakker® does not have “custom management tags” specifically, you can replicate much of their functionality through the wide variety of tags already available within our system.
Weight Tracking (Daily Rate of Gain)
Both AnimalTrakker® and MyFarmWorks allow you to track the weights of your animals. You can do this manually or through a connected scale on either system.
If you’d like to track and view daily rates of gain for specific animals, both systems allow you to do so. However, you must subscribe to MyFarmWorks’ Pro tier for access to daily rate of gain tracking. AnimalTrakker® allows you to view this data through Farm Desktop’s reporting functions.
Medicine Stock Tracking
MyFarmWorks has a feature that allows you to track the medications you have on hand. You start by entering the type of medication, then the batch number, acquisition date, expiration date, and quantity. The system will then track the quantities you use on your stock and remind you when you’re running low. MyFarmWorks has a variety of preloaded medications to choose from, but you can add new ones if you don’t see what you need.
While AnimalTrakker® does not currently support medicine stock tracking, it’s something we’re working to implement soon. Medicine stock tracking is essential for the implementation of automatic dosing guns, so it’s a feature that’s very much on our radar.
Species Tracking
Shearwell’s MyFarmWorks tracks just two species: cattle and sheep. The program is highly specialized to suit these two species, and it supports a wide variety of breeds within that framework. Some farmers choose to use the sheep setting to track goats, as they’re similar enough to be serviceable.
AnimalTrakker®, on the other hand, can track sheep, cattle, horses, donkeys, pigs, and goats. You can have multiple species in a single database and choose which you’re working with on the fly.
Issues with Shearwell MyFarmWorks
Our main issue with MyFarmWorks is that several features are locked behind the Pro subscription. You’re already paying a usage fee for MyFarmWorks – locking important features behind an even higher paywall just adds insult to injury.
This issue is compounded by the fact that their livestock tracking program didn’t always incur a monthly fee. Shearwell’s original livestock program, now called FarmWorks Classic, was an initial upfront cost, not a recurring subscription. You could pay a yearly fee for access to comprehensive updates and specialized customer support, but this was not required. Shearwell’s move from a one-time fee to a monthly subscription has alienated some Shearwell users. Fortunately, Shearwell has stated that support for FarmWorks Classic is not going away, but the program is already quite outdated, especially when compared to MyFarmWorks.
What Doesn’t Shearwell MyFarmWorks Do?
MyFarmWorks is noticeably lacking in features that benefit small and heritage breed farmers. While it can still do the job, the program may not handle all the things these farms need.
Firstly, AnimalTrakker® allows you to use our existing data architecture to run your own breed registry. While not all farmers will have the need for this, it’s an enormous benefit to those who do. MyFarmWorks does not have this capability.
Shearwell also makes no mention of whether MyFarmWorks tracks off-label administration of drugs, though they do allow you to add new drugs to the system. AnimalTrakker® supports and tracks off-label drug administrations with the approval of your veterinarian.
MyFarmWorks also does not support label printing. This is one of our most-loved features, and it makes test tracking extremely convenient.
MyFarmWorks does not offer pedigree or genetics tracking of any kind. While the program will show you the parents of each animal in your database if they’re known, that’s as far back as the tracking goes. As you might expect, MyFarmWorks does not offer automatic inbreeding calculations, either.
Finally, MyFarmWorks is neither free nor open source.
Key Takeaways
AnimalTrakker® and Shearwell’s MyFarmWorks track many of the same data points. Which program you choose comes down to what functionality is most important to you. Do you prefer something free and open-source, or would you rather pay for the convenience of a cloud-based system? While we know what we’d choose, having multiple options is never a bad thing.
While MyFarmWorks is currently the better suited of the two to large flocks that need lots of automation, AnimalTrakker® has the advantage of low startup costs (as low as zero). You can start managing your livestock through AnimalTrakker® immediately and for free, while MyFarmWorks requires a software subscription at minimum. The equipment required to take advantage of MyFarmWorks’ sorting and drafting functions is also quite expensive.
While AnimalTrakker® is still in the process of implementing some features that MyFarmWorks already has, AnimalTrakker® also has features that MyFarmWorks does not. Many of AnimalTrakker®’s features appeal to small farmers and heritage breeders. If you’d benefit from barcode label printing, pedigree or genetics tracking, species tracking outside of sheep and cattle, or registry capabilities, AnimalTrakker® can likely be of use to you.
Since MyFarmWorks offers a no-strings-attached 30-day free trial, you can always try the program before you buy to see if it’s a good fit for your operation. And, of course, AnimalTrakker® will always be free, so you can test-run it as much as you need. You can even run both AnimalTrakker® and MyFarmWorks side-by-side on Shearwell’s Nautiz X6 system.
We hope this post has given you some insight into both AnimalTrakker® and Shearwell MyFarmWorks. If you still have questions about either program, please feel free to reach out to us.