Before she took on the title of “mom,” Jordan Davis Cook’s focus fell on her cattle herd. She and her family run Davis Angus in Western Oklahoma, a seedstock operation in the business of producing quality bulls to be sold at their annual event in March.

Living about 30 minutes from her parents on the ranch’s home base, Cook says it’s always been a challenge to travel to look at the cattle they have scattered across the county, especially during breeding season. 

“Basically we’re from one end to the other [of the county] in the summertime,” Cook explains. “I cannot be there to check heats when I need to be at every pasture.” 

Recently, she’s had to factor in her oldest son, Denton, diving in the show side of the industry. With the new hobby, her schedule has only gotten more complex. 

When Denton first started showing, Cook would have to find someone to stay behind in Oklahoma and check heats while she fulfilled the duties of a stock show mom. She admits things weren’t always handled in her absence the way she wanted them done. 

Four years ago, a solution presented itself, ironically when she was standing in line at the Sullivan’s trailer during a show. 

HeatSiecker, a technology designed to help producers take a step back from manual heat detection, seemed to be just what Cook needed. 

“It’s just a patch that glues on a cow’s tailhead. When she comes into heat and gets mounted, it triggers a sensor in the patch and sends a signal to an antenna. Then it will come back and show on an app on your phone every time the cow is mounted,” explains Brent Sieck. “It will tell you the best time to breed the cow.” 

From pasture to phone

Like Cook, Brent says he and his wife, Sharlyn, were having a hard time balancing family events with the attention their cows needed at breeding time. When he missed the opening to breed one of their best cows several years ago because she was standing in the early hours of the morning, Brent says he knew something had to change. 

“We are cattle producers,” Sharlyn adds. “We’re not just somebody in New York City sitting behind the computer screen … so we tell people, we’ve felt your pains, and we know what it’s like. We just wanted to come up with a better way to do this.”  

Though she jokes it took a lot of explaining to tech developers who were unfamiliar with the beef industry, Sharlyn and Brent spent time getting the product right.

Today, producers can purchase patches for $29.75 each; they’re sold in boxes of 10. The patches have a four-month battery life, so Brent says they’ll get a producer through the entire breeding season. 

For the patches to work properly, producers will also need to invest in an antenna, costing $1,399. Brent says this is a one-time purchase. The antenna offers a 1-2 mile range from the patches on the cows back to the antenna. 

It runs on either AT&T service or Verizon, but no actual internet signal is needed for producers to receive updates on their phones. With the HeatSiecker app downloaded on their smartphones, as long as a cattle producer has cell service, they’ll get an update. 

“Everybody wants something at their fingertips. Well, with this, you have it,” Sharlyn says. “You can be sitting at kid’s basketball game and seeing which cow is in heat because it comes up on an app on your phone.” 

While Cook says there’s still a lot of value in checking heats in person, she can’t be at every pasture every second of every day. 

“It allows us to be a little bit more flexible and to leave town some when we’re AIing (breeding by artificial insemination),” she says, noting how important that’s been as raising show calves had pushed their operation even further into the world of AI and embryo transfers (ET).  

Beyond the freedom she now feels, Cook says she’s also not missing cows that come into heat at night anymore. 

“With the HeatSiecker app, you can actually see how many mounts, what time, know when to breed,” she explains.

This past fall, Cook says she’d go to sleep with a clear phone screen at 9 p.m. and wake up to 101 notifications of cows that stood through the night. 
“That really gives me an idea of when to breed them, when to put embryos in,” she adds. 

When Davis Angus first adopted the technology, only a few cows received the patches. In that group of cows, Cook estimates she made an additional $30,000 in successful breedings. Beyond helping to ensure an AI breeding sticks, she notes it helps her utilize natural heat cycles rather than setting up cows for synchronization. 

Even her father, Jim, who first jokingly said she was giving her cows “cell phones” with the patches, has become a believer in the technology. 

This past year, when the HeatSiecker system was off getting updated, he asked why they weren’t utilizing those cell phones. Cook remembers asking Jim to repeat himself to make sure she’d heard correctly, but she says they both can acknowledge how much technology has improved their operation. 

“I’ve got 15 more fall calves ...  [through]AI that I wouldn’t have if I wouldn’t have had HeatSiecker,” she adds.

Beyond the financial side, Cook is also grateful for a chance to enjoy watching both her sons, Denton and Baylor, in the show ring. 

“We’re chasing them — we’re going to cow shows — and it really frees up a ton of time for us,” she says. “Nothing’s better than laying eyes on your cattle, but you just can’t be everywhere all the time.”  

HeatSiecker has been the missing puzzle piece for their family, but Cook knows not every technology is going to be a magic answer for every cattle business.

“Don’t be afraid to take the risk and try something new,” she encourages. “If you just feel like it’s a good fit for your operation and you think it’s going to work, you just have to go with it and let it prove itself.”

In Cook’s mind, the only wrong answer to the subject of technology in the industry is saying “that’s not how we did it in the past.” With a good attitude and a can-do spirit, she says a producer can let the technological advancement of the modern beef industry take their business to the next level.