Livestock and Ranching Editing and Proofreading Services

Lot 14 sells for three times the average because the catalogue page shows a set of figures that look authoritative. Two of them are computed from a handful of records and carry an accuracy that is barely better than a guess, and the catalogue does not say so. The buyer finds out four years later, in the calving pen, and does not come back.

We edit what livestock producers, ranches and breed businesses produce — sale catalogues and lot descriptions, breeding value and performance data presentation, bull and female sale terms and guarantees, herd health and biosecurity documentation, grazing and stewardship plans, supply agreements with processors, marketing and farm-story material, and lease, succession and finance documents. Our editors work on the documents that carry a buyer's money.

The sale catalogue entry is where a seedstock reputation is built or spent, and its failure is a table of numbers presented without what they are worth. A breeding value with no accuracy figure is a claim with the uncertainty removed. We work through these so every published figure carries its accuracy or the number of records behind it, since two identical values from a proven sire and from a yearling with a parent average are not the same information; so the trait definitions and the base and version of the evaluation are stated, because values are not comparable across evaluations or across years without them; so any adjusted weight is identified as adjusted with the basis, given that a raw and an adjusted weight differ by more than most buyers assume; so contemporary group size is given, as a top ratio within a group of three is arithmetic; so the animal's own performance is shown alongside the predicted values rather than in place of them; so faults, structural notes and anything a vet would find are disclosed, since the buyer will find them and the sale terms will decide the rest; so the guarantee is written with what is covered, for how long, what the remedy is and what the buyer must do to claim; and so the photograph is dated. Catalogues written this way build repeat buyers.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including performance data, herd records and sale material before release. We are editors rather than geneticists, veterinarians or auctioneers, and we offer no view on breeding values, animal quality or sale terms. What we can do is make the page carry its own uncertainty.