At first glance, Terrell and Penny Miller's 120-acre ranch near Bryan doesn't appear to house a fast-growing high-tech enterprise.

The headquarters of Cattlesoft Inc., the Millers' answer to Microsoft for cattle ranchers, is teeming with lounging longhorns the couple can see from their living room window.

When they started their cattle tracking and management software company less than 10 years ago, they weren't entirely sure that they would see such a scene.

"When we started out, we were just a couple of young nobodies," Terrell Miller said.

Terrell Miller created the software for Penny's family to help keep track of their cattle.

"When we got done with the idea, we decided to see if we could sell it on the side as a part-time business," Terrell Miller said.

In July 1999, the Millers, both then 21, landed their first customer and tied the knot the next day.

That customer, Jim Howell with Hilliard Ranches, had tomes of paper records on his Milam County operations.

"Jim's a ranch manager who would spend an entire week updating those notebooks and filing records on his calves," Penny Miller said. "Our software helped him out with organizing those notes."

Cattlesoft's CattleMax software, a melding of Penny Miller's agriculture experience and Terrell Miller's software development background, allowed Howell to transfer his paper records onto a computer database. Terrell Miller also designed the program to give Howell, as well as both registered and commercial cattle ranchers, the ability to generate reports based on the data they enter.

"Our software is designed for ranches that individually tag their cattle," Penny Miller said. "It helps them keep track of the calves that each cow has had, medical treatments, weight, weaning weight, sales information, pictures, pedigrees and genealogy -- all things commercial and registered ranches have to keep up with for their ag exemptions."

Terrell Miller said the software also allows users to know on an individual level whether certain bulls, based on their calves, are worth buying.

"Without reporting, record keeping is just an electronic filing cabinet," he said.

With one customer under their belt, the couple were on the way to growing their business. But two to three years into the venture, they still needed to find a way to draw attention to their product.

Penny Miller started cultivating and strengthening relationships with cattle associations and equipment companies, and the couple started an advertising campaign, targeting newspapers, magazines and Web sites frequented by ranchers.

The couple started integrating its software with various cattle associations, so customers could maintain their paperwork electronically.

"Two years ago, the majority of our customers were in Texas," Terrell Miller said. "Through marketing, we've taken the business to a national level."

The company, which has customers in all 50 states and 32 countries, has three full-time employees who work out of their homes. The Millers have also developed equine and longhorn management software.

Each version of the company's cattle software, which Cattlesoft upgrades every two years, has boosted Cattlesoft's sales by 50 percent.

The Millers declined to disclose their annual revenue. Customers pay between $125 and $495 for the software. Cattlesoft offers a discount to ranchers managing 50 or fewer head of cattle.

The company's sales growth from 2004-06 earned Cattlesoft the 63rd spot in the prestigious Aggie 100, an annually published list of the 100 fastest Aggie-owned businesses. Cattlesoft was the only agriculture-related company.

"Being in the Aggie 100 opened a lot of doors for us," Terrell Miller said. "The way our business is growing now, people can expect to see us in there again."

• Holli L. Estridge's e-mail address is holli.estridge@theeagle.com.

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