Best of the Barns Nominations Underway

You may have seen on facebook, but nominations for Best of the Barns 2012 opened up this week! Best of the Barns is our annual contest to recognize the best of the best in the livestock business, and it's a contest voted on and picked by YOU!

To start the ball rolling, the first step is that we ask you in the livestock business to tell us who should be in the running for the awards. This is our nomination phase. Each day we will post a category and we ask YOU to write in and tell us who are the top people or businesses in the category. The top 5 responses will make the ballot later in the fall.

We also need your help in some new categories for 2012. Some we already have in mind are Best Livestock App, Best Cattle Record Keeping Software, and a new Best of the Barns Hall of Fame. 

So keep watching our facebook page to chime in on who should be on the ballot. And if you have an idea for a new category this year, email it to kc@ranchhousedesigns.com.

Best of the Barns Winners

Well it is only January 2nd and it seems that the cat is out of the bag on the highly anticipated winners of the 2011 Best of the Barns competition! Congratulations to all of the winners!

If you haven't had a chance to see the official announcement of the winners in January's The Showbox magazine, you can also see the winners here. If you're wondering why some winners don't have a bio written about them, it's because they did not send it in. If you happen to be one of these businesses please send your stuff to emily@ranchhousedesigns.com so we can add you to the winners featured on the website.

We send a big congratulations out to all of the winners. The livestock industry is full of very talented businesses and individuals and we consider it our honor to run this contest to help recognize those who do so much for the industry we love.

P.S. Winners...trophies are here and ready to ship! Be expecting them by the time you get back from Denver!

Best of the Barns "Too Close to Calls"

With just a few days left in our 2011 Best of the Barns voting, we have about 14 categories that are literally just too close to call!! In these categories, there are less than 20 votes separating the contestants! So I know you have an opinion on who the best of these are....go vote!

A few reminders, you don't have to vote for every category, you can just pick the ones that are important to you.

You DO however have to enter your email address, and your vote only counts once per email address. Yes, we do have some people who are trying to spam and vote for themselves 100 times. This is the only fair way to do it. If you don't provide an email address, your vote doesn't count.

Here are the categories that are in a dead heat:

• Best Cattle Blog (Question 5)
• Best Ranch Facebook Page (Question 6)
• Best Ranch Website (Question 9)
• Best Sale Catalog (Question 12)
• Best Online Auction Service (Question 26)
• Best University Animal Science Program (Question 29)
• Best University Livestock Judging Program (Question 31)
• Best Feed Supplier (Question 35)
• Best Show Awards (Question 37)
• Best On Farm Photographer (Question 40)
• Best Educational Clinic (Question 45)
• Best Video Production Company (Question 47)
• Best Boar Stud (Question 48)
• Best Sheep Magazine (Question 53)

Go to http://www.bestofthebarns.com/ to vote!