Independent Review - BA for Cats
The following review of Breeders Assistant for Cats (version 3) was published in the primary UK publication for cat fanciers, Our Cats, in 2001. It was written by Marianne Bornhult. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of Our Cats and Marianne Bornhult.
Pedigree computer program review-
BREEDER'S ASSISTANT FOR CATS 3
By Marianne Bornhult
As a breeder, the tedious task of hand writing pedigrees for each litter was something that I could do without -I tended to do it in front of the TV, and if what I watched got too interesting, I'd invariably make mistakes and ended up having to scrap the pedigree form and start all over, or use Tipp-ex, which looked far from professional. I also found that names of cats easily got mis-spelt -the name of the same cat could have several different spellings in different pedigrees, mainly due to the fact that it can at times be difficult to decipher people's handwriting. So, when I got my first computer a few years ago, something which was high on my list of priorities was to purchase a program that would store all my cat details and print out neat pedigrees.
I duly purchased a program, input details of close to 600 cats -tedious task, but once it's done it's done! It was great to be able to print out pedigrees for my kittens.
However, over a period of time I started to realise that I missed certain features in my program. I wanted more, and I wasn't able to customise my pedigrees quite the way I wanted to be able to do. So I went trawling around the internet, and found that a lot of websites offer similar programs for sale, and most of them let you download a trial version to check all the functions of the program before making a decision on whether or not to purchase it. Many of the programs had interesting features, but I found that most were US orientated, and so could not deal with GCCF breed numbers for instance -which clearly was no good for me.
Eventually I came across an advert in Our Cats for Breeders Assistant 3, and since then I have not looked back.
Breeders Assistant uses Windows, so is very easy to navigate if you have any computer knowledge. There are more functions than I can mention, but the main one is, of course, to keep records of your cats. To get started, you need to enter details of people first (you have a choice on whether to work with cats or contacts -contacts being people- or matings, show records etc.) such as breeders, judges and similar. For each person you enter name, whether they are a breeder, judge, stud owner or whatever, and any other details you may or may not have -such as prefix and address. If you enter prefix, every time you enter a cat with that prefix into your database, the correct breeder will automatically show up. Next, you enter the details about your cats -one per record, which show in the form of a window or card. Here you enter the cat's registered name, title (choosing from a menu of titles which you can customise if any titles you need are missing) , pet name if you wish, date of birth, registration number and details of what body the cat is registered with (the program works with all the main ones), breeder and owner (which is easily done as you will simply chose from a drop down menu of names which includes all the people you have previously entered into your database) and of course breed. The breed is very simple to chose -there is an enormous list of breed numbers and breeds , and you simply click on the one you want, and it is entered automatically. It was somewhat daunting to scroll past hundreds of breeds and colour variations that had nothing to do with my own breeds, but this was easily solved as you can once again customise the database to suit you own needs -and so I chose my database to only show me Persian, Exotic and British cats (British because some of my Exotics have British ancestors!) When attempting to create a record for my Cream Silver Tabby Exotic I realised no such breed was included, but again it was easy to add this to the database.
If you want to be really detailed, you can then add all sorts of notes about the cat in question, such as health records and photographs -the photographs I found particularly useful.
Having entered all my own cats into the database, I needed to start work on their pedigrees. This entailed creating a record for each cat in their pedigrees -with as little or much information as I had to hand. For some I only knew what it said in the pedigrees -name, breed number and gender, sometimes reg.number. For others I had further details. Once done, it was very easy to assemble the pedigree for each cat. Clicking the tab for "Ancestors" gave me a blank pedigree, and each time I clicked on a space in it, a drop down menu gave me a choice of all the cats in the database -either male or female, as obviously a grand mother for instance can only be female! I choose the name, and the cat's name and title appeared. Once I had done this with a couple of cats, the program remembered what was behind cats already entered, and so now I can simply click on the names of one of my studs and one of my queens, and hey presto the entire pedigree appears as if by magic.
To print the pedigree out, I had a choice of various formats -number of generations, inbreeding coefficient showed or not, a logo can be added, the cat's photograph can be included, a watermark picture can be added to the background of the pedigree, etc etc. You can even print circular pedigrees should you so wish -although this is more a novelty for fun the way I see it! It is also possible to create your own preferred pedigree layout, or indeed several, and save it for future use.
Apart from the obvious feature of creating and printing pedigrees, you can also create show records for each cat, veterinary records, vaccination records, accounts, there is an appointments calendar, you can do trial matings to see what a particular mating would look like pedigree wise and so on. It is easy to update or change the details for any cat at any given time, as you simply click on its name in the list of all cats, and make changes accordingly.
There are more features in Breeders Assistant than I can mention, and many that I haven't even tried out yet. There is a very useful tutorial which will tell you everything you need to know, and also an online manual covering close to 300 pages for the really curious!
One of my favourite features of Breeders Assistant is that each cat's pedigree will also automatically be available in text format, which makes it easy to e-mail, and in html format, which made it very easy for me to include the pedigrees of my cats on my website.
All in all, an impressive program which I am very pleased with.
Breeders Assistant 3 is available from Tenset, tel. 0870 870 7740 (+44 1223 290291) Or can be purchased from their website (where a trial version of the program can be downloaded) http://www.tenset.co.uk There are also other versions available, such as for dogs, hamsters, rabbits etc. The price is £95 if downloaded from the website (credit card payment) or £105 if posted to you on a CD ROM.
Marianne Bornhult
NOTE: Since this review was written our prices have been revised.
