Cutest Halloween Costume Contest

Send us your photos of the Best Halloween Costume and we'll post our favorites here on the blog! We know that all of the RHD clients have some adorable little ones who are going to look as cute as ever in their costumes this year. Or, maybe you're an adult who likes to dress up too and you want to submit yourself in costume.

So send us your kids Halloween photos and show off your cute-ness (or scary-ness) to the rest of your friends at RHD!

Please send photos to rachel@ranchhousedesigns.com. We'll give everyone a few days to get their pics off their digital camera and post the photos here in a week or so!

Favorite October Ads

We are happy to announce the winners of the October Ad Design contest at RHD! This month's contest was judged by Courtney Coufal, who is the communications specialist for the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University. Courtney and her family live in College Station, Texas. Courtney coordinates all of the marketing and communications for the department including being the editor of the weekly e-mail newsletter called "Animal Science Weekly."

We sent all of our October ads to Courtney and asked her to pick her top 3, but she said there were so many she liked, she had to pick more! She said: "Overall great ads! I love the work y’all do. The ads I selected as my favorites really stand-out!" So here are this month's winners, in no certain order. Congratulations to these clients!

Clay Farms - At first glance, this ad stood out and caught my eye. There’s something attention-grabbing about a giant boar standing firm staring you in the eyes! Definitely attention-grabbing!

Forgason – Again, very attention-grabbing with the large image of the calf. Very cute image, overall soft feel, welcoming and makes me want to call these people because they appear friendly and inviting.

Dismukes-Ranch – Great use of colors and graphics. Love the image! The image and tagline “…Something New in the Barn?” entices me to read on.

J-R Farms – Overall very nice, clean, classic ad and feel. Sometimes less is more. Great use of color. Professional. I may even like this one more than the other three but the other three are more attention-grabbing and memorable.

Brad-Harrub – Again, attention grabbing with “does God exist?” Makes me want to read on. Nice use of typography and colors. Great use and placement of the opened hands.

V8-Ranch – Love the colors and typography. Eye-catching.

Sandpoint – Great tagline “power of the point!” Enjoy the layout of the logo and text.

November "On The House" Cover Photo Contest

Send us your favorite fall photo and win a Ranch House Designs cap! We are asking our friends and clients to choose their favorite fall photo or Thanksgiving photo to be used on our November cover of "On the House", the online magazine for Ranch House Designs.

Photos can be sent to rachel@ranchhousedesigns.com by October 28th. The winner will be announced on November 3rd when the new magazine will be published online.

Also just a reminder to our clients, if you have an ad to send in for the magazine, please send it to liz@ranchhousedesigns.com by October 28th. All ads designed by RHD are automatically included in the publication but any of our web site clients are also able to submit their ads for the publication too!

Fan Pages on Facebook

When we created the V8 Fan Page on Facebook earlier this summer, this was the first ranch fan page I could find on facebook. Now I'm not going to "officially" say this was the first ranch fan page on Facebook, but at the time, I searched and could not find any other ranches, show cattle companies, or showpig operations online. Actually, this was my mom's idea to get a fan page for V8, and she has a pretty good grasp on what's cool and not cool online so we went ahead and created one for V8. at that same time, we created a fan page for RHD too.

Now, there are tons of ranch-related and livestock-related Fan Pages on Facebook. It seems like every time I log in I get a suggestion of becomming a fan of some other ag-related business.

So if you're on Facebook, you might want to consider starting a fan page for your business. It's really simple, it's free, and it's another great way of using a social network tool to help promote your brand. The easiest way to start your own business' fan page is to go to another fan page, like the V8 Ranch one, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and look on the left hand column for a link that says "Create A Page for My Business."

If you are a RHD client, we can easily provide you with graphics to go on your fan page, such as a Facebook sized logo or other options for you to post. One thing we do caution clients about is that you would want to consider what photos or graphics you post on facebook, because of copyright restrictions. By agreeing to the Facebook terms of service you release any copyright on any photo you upload to their site. So if you upload your photos or logo, just be aware that you are releasing fb to use it if they want.

If you're new on facebook, please add Ranch House Designs to your list of fan pages. Also all of the RHD staff is on facebook, so search for your favorite designer and add us as friends. Here are also some other Fan pages of RHD clients....

• V8 Ranch
• Tusa Show Cattle
• Williams Show Cattle
• The ShowTimes Magazine
• Michigan State University Beef Barn
• Melatonin Implants
• Southern Jewlz

Louisville Display Banners

With Louisville just a month away, now is the time to order your display banners for the North American! We can do banners of all sizes, but the most popular are the 4x4 square banners and the 4x8 long display banners. Whether you have a new sire to promote, or just need a banner for your farm to put at your stalls, we can design a banner for you that will get you noticed and fit your budget! Call 979-532-9141 to order or e-mail tricia@ranchhousedesigns.com to get started.

Denver bull banners will be due December 10th for standard orders. For the past few years, the RHD banners have been the favorites in the yards. If you have a bull to promote, you need RHD to do your banner. So be thinking about that and we'll be looking forward to hearing from you!

Upgrades to Maximum Exposure Video Service

After working with Maximum Exposure Photography for several years now, we were very pleased a few weeks ago when we got their videos to post on Jeff Miller's web site. Maximum Exposure has upgraded their technology and now offers video hosting to those people who use their service, which is much better for clients.

By Maximum Exposure hosting the videos, it saves clients money in web hosting expenses, and offers a standardized video player which should help in accessibility of the videos.

Kudos to Mark and the rest of the Maximum Exposure team on this upgraded service!

Boneso Livestock

For a few years now we have gotten familiar with the Boneso Family because of the success of their children Wes and Maggie. These two young people have had a great track record of success in California, winning the State Fair steer show and several other prospects shows in the past few years.

So now we are very happy to launch the new web site for Boneso Livestock, which is owned and operated by Steve, Mary Ann, Wes and Maggie. The Boneso family is from San Miguel, California.

They will be hosting a private treaty sale on October 17 at their farm in San Miguel, California. This sale will feature a select group out of donor cows hand-picked for the Boneso's by Blaine Rodgers and Nick Reimann. After very successful show careers, the cows went into production at their farm and raised top show prospects that will be sold at the sale.

You'll also recognize the Walks on Water sire, who was a display bull in Denver 2009. This is a Heat Wave son.

So we hope you will visit http://www.bonesolivestock.com/ and check out the sale information and donors in this great west-coast program.

Working Ranch Magazine

A few weeks ago I was sitting at Catalena Hatters in Bryan, Texas while Brandon was getting his new cowboy hat shaped. I saw this magazine sitting on the bench in their store so I picked it up and started browsing through it. LOVE IT! This is a great magazine for anyone in the cattle business.

A relatively new publication, Working Ranch is what I would consider similar to a Sports Illustrated, Cosmo, or Cowboys & Indians type magazine for ranchers and those who love the cattle business. It's very trendy, has great articles, and really relates to those who are living the ranch lifestyle day in and day out.

The great thing about this magazine is that it is free! That's right, you can get a free subscription if you visit their web site at http://www.workingranchtv.com/.

Their next issue that will be arriving is the November/December magazine, so you might want to go ahead and subscribe so that you'll be on the mailing list for that issue.

And, for our advertising clients, this is a great publication to consider advertising in. Their rates are very affordable and they have a great circulation. If you're a livestock person wanting to advertise the person to talk to is Todd McCartney and his e-mail is todd@workingranchmag.com. This is a great outlet for advertising bull sales and other registered cattle events.

Enjoy reading!

St. Paul Lutheran Church of Wharton

"We believe God’s purpose for St. Paul Lutheran Church is to
boldly teach, preach, and live the love of Christ." - St. Paul Lutheran Church of Wharton
 
What beautiful words from a great group of people! This month we were very happy to create a web site for St. Paul Lutheran Church, one of our community's churches. With a very rich and deep tradition in Wharton County, this congregation celebrated their 110th anniversary in 2005.
 
At RHD, we love to work with churches to help share the good news of God's love with others. Because of this, we offer special discounts and even in some cases pro-bono work to faith-based organizations. This month, we created the new web site for St. Paul Lutheran, we designed flyers for the Abell Street Church of Christ gospel meeting, and we have other church web sites in the works.
 
We encourage you to visit http://www.stpaulwharton.org/. If your church or association needs help with your church web site or church promotional materials, we're glad to help.

New Web Site - Top Line Angus

We are happy to introduce our newest web site client, Top Line Farms of Tremont, Illinois!

Top Line Farms is located in Central Illinois about 15 miles south of Peoria. They are registered Angus breeders who strive to produce eye appealing cattle that will compete at any level while maintaining maternal strengths that make great cows. Their cattle will function in any climate and be versatile enough for all parts of the country.

The folks at Top Line have put together a great set of donors both raised on the farm and a few purchased from leading Angus operations. Their first production sale will be October 24th in Tremont, IL and a great sale preview of the offering is pictured on their Sales Page.

We hope you will visit this web site where you'll be very impressed with their Angus genetics!

Mock Livestock

If you're looking for heavy muscled, good ribbed, structurally correct wethers with a killer look -- there is one place to go --- Mock Livestock!



We are happy to introduce our newest show goat web site at RHD -- Mock Livestock. ML is owned by two great young people in this business - Kevin and Megan Mock of Blanco, Texas.

The Mock Family, who will be growing very soon with the birth of their twins, are two very busy go-getters who have made quite a name in the show goat business.

Mock Livestock consist of around 150 show wether oriented embryo recip does and a small herd of elite embryo donors. Their program is built around predictable, line-bred pedigrees that are proven to produce champion show wethers. Such genetic lines include “900”, Schafer, Kohls, and Powell-Holman.
We have worked with Kevin for about two years now on a variety of projects before officially launching the newly-redesigned Mock Livestock site. Kevin is also a part of the Duelm's Prevailing Genetics team and a goat speecialist for Show-Rite feeds as well as a trailer designer for Sundowner Trailers.
 
We hope you will take a minute to visit their new web site and remember Mock Livestock whenever you need a killer show goat or show pig.

September Web Updates Blowout

As to be expected with all of the busy club calf sales during the month of September, RHD recorded our biggest web updating month in the 10-year-history of RHD in September 2009!! This month we did a record-number 333 updates from September 1-30!!!

Recently I was visiting with someone who has a web site done by a company other than RHD. This person was complaining that they had sent in some photos to be added to their web site and 5 days had passed, and the photos still weren't added. Their sale was coming up, and they wanted their photos up right away. Wouldn't that be FRUSTRATING!

At RHD, we know that time is money. That's why we make it a top priority to keep our clients web sites updated as soon as possible. Of the 333 updates we did this month, 271 of these were done on the VERY SAME DAY the client requested the update. The remaining updates were done within 1 day of the client update request.

So yeah, we're tooting our own horn a little bit, but we feel this is important.

Our Grand Champion Updater for September 2009 was Beefmaster Breeders United. This is a great group of people to work with. By and large, their updates are due to the very popular Buy/Sell listing on their web site which is a great service to BBU members. They had twice as many updates as any other client.

Our Reserve Champion Updater for Sepember 2009 was the American Brahman Breeders Association.

Other sites in the final drive for this month's updating championships were:

• Virginia Club Calf Producers
• Rincker Law
• O.H. Kruse Grain & Milling
• Matt Lautner
• Graves Cattle Co
• Cross S Arena
• Aegerter Marketing Service

RHD's On The House Online Magazine

New from RHD! Introducing our "On The House" online magazine! We will be publishing this issue online each month specially designed for RHD clients. We created this opportunity as an added value to clients we design print ads for, and also clients we do web sites for.

How can you get your ad in this magazine? Simple, be a RHD client.

If we do your print ad, we'll automatically include your ad in this publication for as many times as you want. For example, if we design a bull ad for you, if you want us to include it in every online issue for the entire year, just let us know. If you have a sale ad, we'll include it in every month publication until your sale happens.

If you have a magazine or someone else do your print ad, but RHD does your web site, we'll still include your ad free of charge. All you have to do is get your final, camera ready ad to us by the 20th of the month to be included.

How much does it cost? It's free to all RHD clients!

So we invite you to check out this month's "On the House" by visiting Ranch House Designs. The magazine is posted on our home page. We welcome your feedback and ideas! This month's cover features our good friend and RHD client Travis Pembrook judging at the South Dakota State Fair, taken by Lacee Caffee of LC Promotions. If you have a cover shot you'd like to submit, e-mail it to rachel@ranchhousedesigns.com

RHD Speaking at San Antonio Farm and Ranch Expo

This Thursday night, I've got plans to be enjoying a nice Mexican dinner and margarita at Casa Rio on the San Antonio Riverwalk!

Why? Because on Friday, I was invited to be a speaker at the San Antonio International Farm and Ranch Expo at the San Antonio Livestock Show.

This is the 1st Annual expo, hosted by Texas AgriLife Extension, Texas Farm Bureau, Texas Department of Agriculture, and the San Antonio Convention Bureau. It will be held at the stock show, (San Antonio Livestock Exposition) and is free to attend.

The conference runs from October 8-10 (Thursday-Saturday) but I will be speaking twice on Friday. My first appearance will be at 10:00 a.m. on Friday as part of the "Spouse's" program, then later in the day at 2:00 p.m. 

So if you're a south Texan, stop by the Expo and come listen to my talks. And even if you're not interested in my talks on web design and advertising, there are over 50 different educational programs and a big trade show, also free to attend.

Bonnell Club Calves

One of our most recent web site creations is for Bonnell Club Calves of Columbus, Indiana. The Bonnells run a small herd of Shorthorn and Chi-cross cattle that was originally started from their children's show careers. Their cattle are sold on a first-come first served basis and currently they have a great selection of calves sired by Heat Wave, Sun Seeker, Hannibal and more.

Visit http://www.bonnellclubcalves.com/

October Featured Project - Business Cards

Last month, we featured an online coupon for our blog readers for a special 10% off discount on any new project at RHD. We had such a great response we have decided to start offering a monthly blog special as a bonus to those who loyally check our blog and keep up with what's going on at RHD.

This month, our "Blog Special" is business cards. Mention this blog for a 10% off discount on any new business card project or business card re-order from us.

Our business cards are custom designed, full color, glossy business cards that will give your business the competitive edge over others who just have your plain old, run of the mill, home printed business card.

So if you're running low on business cards, here's a good time to stock up, or if you've been considering getting some but haven't quite pulled the trigger, now's a good time to order. Don't forget to mention the Blog Special 10% discount when you book your new project for business cards with Tricia. To order, call 979-532-9141 or email tricia@ranchhousedesigns.com

Lot One Magazine

After being out of the office for a few days, when I got back today I noticed a new magazine on my desk-- Lot One. This magazines is published by my good friend Brad Fahrmeier of LiveAuctions.tv. I have some very vintage photos of Brad and I when we were both on the American Junior Shorthorn Association board but I'll just keep those to myself! :)

I consider Brad one of my close friends in this business, and he is someone I really respect for having very out of the box ideas and a great business sense. We chat lots of times on MSN messenger to bounce around ideas. So I am happy to be one of the advertisers in this publication.

I thought this magazine was EXCELLENT! It was the perfect mix of ads, of course, but yet filled with interesting artcles and information that any rancher would love to read. This issue is filled with ranch stories, interests, and hobbies of the cattle business. As Brad states in his article,  "It's the one of a kind people, places and cultures that we come across that will be evident in every issue."

I think it's a breath of fresh air to have a publication like this in the cattle business. From stories on how to throw a tailgate party, to a recipe for the "best margarita" to historical articles -- this publication ROCKS.

So I encourage you to look up this magazine. You can subscribe and view the magazine online at http://www.liveauctions.tv/ or if you join the Live Auctions facebook group you can view it there too. Congratulations to Brad and the Lot One Managing Editor - Marissa Mrozinski on a fabulous job!