Current economic and social trends are driving the cattle industry's needs for better record-keeping. This paper assesses those needs and critiques three current, commerically available programs for their ability to address them with a high degree of both utility and usability. An overview of the industry and its needs are presented along with a comparison of each program's offerings. Usability (user- friendliness) was critiqued with both a user-test and a heuristic evaluation. The results of both were then compared with each other.