Long before Today’s Rancher Desktop became the program you see today, there was the original Today’s Rancher.
For more than two decades, that software carried an idea we still believe in: livestock-management software should be practical, understandable, and built around the people doing the work.
Over the years it changed names and editions, including the Today’s Rancher Bronze Edition. Technology changed around it. Windows changed. Computers changed. The way software is developed and distributed changed.
And eventually, it was time for Today’s Rancher to change too.
In 2026, we made the decision not to keep patching and extending software built for another generation of computing. Instead, we went back to the foundation and rebuilt Today’s Rancher as a modern Windows application.
That means the original Today’s Rancher and Bronze Edition have now been retired from sale.
But retired is not forgotten.
There is a great deal of the original Today’s Rancher in the new one, not necessarily in its code, but in its philosophy. Keep the screens understandable. Keep the rancher in control. Don’t make simple jobs complicated just because software can. And listen when the people using it tell you what they need.
For those of us who built and lived with the original program for all those years, retiring it is a little bittersweet. Software may be made of code, but after twenty years, some of it inevitably becomes part of your life.
So we aren’t erasing the original Today’s Rancher from this website.
We’re simply taking its lessons, and a little piece of its heart, with us into what comes next.
Thank you, old friend. You earned your spurs.
These are a few screens from the original Today’s Rancher Desktop. They’re preserved here not as documentation for a current product, but as part of the history of Today’s Rancher, and as a reminder of just how far the software has traveled.
The Next Generation
The original Today’s Rancher has retired, but the ideas behind it haven’t.
Today’s Rancher Desktop has been rebuilt for a new generation of Windows computers while carrying forward the philosophy that started it all.
Today’s Rancher Desktop has been rebuilt for a new generation of Windows computers while carrying forward the philosophy that started it all.
And we’re not finished.
Today’s Rancher will continue to grow as we add new capabilities and, most importantly, learn from the people who use it.
Or, in ranch terms: the barn is built; we’re still adding stalls.
Explore the new Today’s Rancher Desktop →