Conner Prairie Improves Heritage Livestock Recordkeeping with Farmbrite
- Joshua Brock
- 19 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Conner Prairie is not a typical farm. Located in Fishers, Indiana, this 1,046-acre living history museum blends historic interpretation, rare livestock preservation, and modern agriculture education.
“We most likely house the largest collection of rare heritage livestock breeds within Indiana.
Within the United States, we’re in the top five largest Arapawa goat herds. With the English Longhorns, we’re one of three total in the United States.” Emily Pennington | Livestock Manager, Conner Prairie
Conner Prairie Farms, founded by Eli Lilly in the 1930s, focused first on show stock and later on production animals. Now known as Conner Prairie, the site continues those agricultural traditions and raises around 300 head of livestock, including English Longhorn cattle, Tunis sheep, Ossabaw Island hogs, Arapawa goats, and American rabbits—heritage breeds that are rare in the United States, and in some cases, close to extinction.
Conner Prairie welcomes roughly half a million visitors a year. Many of them are children seeing farm animals up close for the first time, learning where their food really comes from. That public mission, combined with the responsibility of stewarding rare genetics, makes good recordkeeping absolutely essential.
For years, though, the team was trying to manage all of that complexity with notebooks, spreadsheets, and Google Calendar.
From Random Notebooks to Reliable Records
When Emily stepped into her role, she inherited a patchwork system of records that reflected years of growth and improvisation.
“Before my time, my previous boss was using his notebook, which I can tell you right now, I still have it,” Emily recalls. “It’s got random entries in it, no years, and it’s ‘Ram and a Ram with ewes.’ I don’t know who this ram is. I don’t know who those ewes were.”
The next manager (now department Director) made progress by moving old and new data and records into more detailed notebooks plus Excel spreadsheets and Google Calendar. That helped, but only up to a point. As the herd grew, the system couldn’t keep up with the demands of a modern, genetics-focused operation.
“We kind of hit a number with our livestock where it was no longer feasible for us to keep the records that we needed with the number of animals that we have,” Emily explains. “Especially with as much breeding and genetics as we do, we needed something more valuable to us than the spreadsheet.”
On any given day, the team might be:
Tracking vaccinations and boosters for sheep, goats, and cattle
Recording births, weights, and movements across multiple paddocks
Managing semen inventory and embryo transfer records
Capturing pasture rotations and grazing days for future analysis
Logging income from meat, milk products, and livestock sales
All of that needed to be accurate, accessible in the field, and easy to share with staff—and, when necessary, with the board.
Finding the Right Fit for a Unique Operation
Emily began exploring farm management software options, but most tools weren’t built for a place like Conner Prairie.
“A lot of stuff that I found was very species-specific, and we raise a lot of species,” she says. “Finding something that would incorporate all of those was really important for us… I’d like to be able to keep my chickens and my cows together, but I don’t want to necessarily have two different platforms.”
She signed up for a free trial of Farmbrite—but at first, it didn’t stick.
“I signed up for a Farmbrite free trial, and I probably played with it for three days, and I said, ‘No thank you,’ and I left it to the side,” Emily admits with a laugh.
Two months later, she decided to give Farmbrite another chance and reached out to Farmbrite’s team.
“I emailed Chris, and I was like, ‘Hey, so my trial has expired. I would love to give this a try again. Can I get another trial?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely. And let me know what I can do to help make this easier for you.’”
This time, Emily began importing real data, building out her herds, and setting up the system around Conner Prairie’s unique needs. That’s when everything clicked.
“Once I started importing all of our information, I did not realize how easy it was to keep records and to have everything at our fingertips,” she says.
Farmbrite in the Field: Mobile, Shared, and Practical
For Emily and her team, mobile access was non-negotiable.
“It was always nice to be able to pull [Google Calendar] up on our phone, and that was something that was genuinely important to me—being able to be out in the field and just pull info up on my phone,” she explains. “Since then, Farmbrite has been amazing for us.”
Today, Farmbrite livestock management software is at the center of Conner Prairie’s daily livestock management:
Health & Vaccinations: Emily bulk-enters vaccinations for lambs and kids, tracks boosters, and keeps a clear history for each animal.
Breeding & Genetics: The team logs semen inventory, embryo transfers, donors, and recipients, ensuring reproductive records reflect reality.
Pasture Rotation: Rotational grazing moves are tracked across paddocks, capturing how long animals were in each pasture.
Weights & Growth: Weights are recorded directly from the chute into Farmbrite, no paper notebook required.
Access for Staff: Farm hands can see births, vaccinations, and locations without being able to change sensitive data, thanks to permission settings.
“It’s nice to be able to run my cows through the chute, get their weights, and just put it in. I don’t have to worry about this piece of paper… It’s been really handy to be able to just take the equipment with me, being my phone, which I already have on me anyway, and just use it.”
Making Hay: Time Savings and Hay Savings
The most immediate impact Emily noticed was time.
“You would spend half a day just inputting my CDT vaccines for my sheep and goats,” she says of the old spreadsheets-plus-calendar method. “And now I can just bulk run, go through all those lambs and kids and bam, they’re all in there… So it’s gone from half a day down to 20 minutes max, which has just been a true lifesaver for us.”
Farmbrite also helped transform raw records into real insight—especially around rotational grazing.
A few years ago, Emily began experimenting with moving animals more intentionally between paddocks. She already knew how much she was spending on hay each year, but she didn’t have a great way to compare grazing days, stocking density, and hay costs. With Farmbrite capturing pasture rotations and grazing durations, she could finally connect the dots.
“I was able to see how long animals were in each pasture when I was moving them,” Emily explains. “And then I was able to take those old spending numbers, see how much hay I was spending… and with rotational grazing, we ended up saving $6,000 in hay or something, which is quite a bit.”
Without solid records, that kind of savings might have gone unnoticed—or been impossible to prove.
A Partnership That Listens
For a heritage-breed program doing advanced reproductive work, off-the-shelf software isn’t always enough. Emily has worked closely with Farmbrite’s team to fine-tune features for scenarios like embryo transfer.
“I was doing embryo transfer stuff and I realized that the donor was getting recognition for the kiddings but the recipient wasn’t,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Hey, I actually need the recipient to show that she kidded and that she’s not just been open for four years.’”
The response she got mattered.
“I remember someone was like, ‘I had not thought about that. Thank you for bringing that to our attention,” Emily says. “It was just really nice to be able to be like, ‘Hey, here's the things that I’m finding. Can we find a way to incorporate this into the system?’ And I have felt so important and valued… seeing that people are actually listening and working on them has been just a great thing for us.”
For an operation tasked with protecting some of the rarest genetics in the world—there are only about 600 Arapawa goats globally—having a responsive software partner is key.
Empowering a Mission That Blends Past, Present, and Future
Conner Prairie’s agriculture team doesn’t just raise animals. They interpret history, teach school groups, host Heritage Breeds Week, and help visitors understand both historic and modern agriculture.
Emily frequently speaks about recordkeeping in public classes and workshops. Farmbrite has become part of that story—a practical example of how thoughtful use of technology can support sustainable, humane, and historically informed farming.
“It does take a little bit of work to get information input to a new system,” she tells other farmers. “But once that information is in that system, it’s in there, and you can pull it up whenever. It takes a second, but you can get there.”
For Emily, Farmbrite's fam management software has become more than a recordkeeping tool. It’s a foundation that supports Conner Prairie’s mission to protect rare breeds, manage land responsibly, and connect hundreds of thousands of visitors each year to the realities of agriculture.
“I have nothing but nice things to say. Truly,” she says. “Now I know that I can just come up with this information and hand it off to someone and know that it’s accurate.”
And for the animals—and the people who care for them—that accuracy makes all the difference.
Joshua, his wife Jenn, and their dog Rooster live in North Central Pennsylvania. Joshua is the owner and operator of Hoffman Appalachian Farm, where they grow Certified Naturally Grown hops. Joshua has over twelve years of experience in growing crops, including growing in an organic system. In his spare time, he enjoys trail running, backpacking, and cycling.