So you want to be a rancher...

Living and working among ranchers, I have known that ranching has gone far beyond the Old West image of guys sitting around a campfire with no technology in sight. What I didn't know until I started researching was how many ranching-related Web sites there are out there. You can find everything from cowboys' and cowgirls' personal pages about life in God's Country to beef producers' organizations' sites.

Beyond the sheer volume of Web sites out there, there's also a lot of ranch-related software available at several different Web sites. Ranchers have begun using software to help with land management and giving their cattle nutritionally-balanced diets, among other things. If anyone out there is just getting started in the ranching business, or has been in it for a while but hasn't yet gone "high-tech," such software can be a wonderful labor-saving device.

I know that ranching has, of late, been facing many challenges. Vegetarianism, animal rights groups, changing climatology and limited resources have all been thrown up as barriers to the age-old profession of breeding animals. That's why I was heartened to see Web sites devoted to sustainable ranching and "environmentally-friendly" agricultural practices. If nothing else, using some new ecological practices might be a good PR move for the beef industry.

But when I say "beef industry," I'm being very exclusive. Besides the usual sheep, goats and hogs, people are breeding all kinds of things -- llamas, alpacas, emus. I even came across sites for bee, butterfly and sea horse ranching.

This being my first column, I decided to focus on the more practical Web sites out there which offer resources, information and products to ranchers. I found some awfullly good ones, too -- sites that made me want to save up for a couple of thousand acres of range to share with the husband, the cats and a few dozen head of Angus.

Probably the best site I found for "greenhorns" like me was AgriHelp at http://www.agrihelp.com. Provided by MacKenzie and Associates, an agribusiness consulting firm in California, AgriHelp has got a little bit of everything. Seventeen ranching-related software programs, written by and provided for free by Oklahoma State University animal science students, are available at this site. Topics range from working and herding dogs to business plans and livestock.

Shopping is an option at this site, too, but not your usual ranch-style shopping -- we're talking pet astrology, arts and crafts here.

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