# Anyone got breeders assistant?



## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Is it possible that the company allow you to access your BA from other computers? Mine is stored to my pc but id like to access it from my laptop but it says you need some sort of password the last time I tried to do it,iv tried to contact BA but there is a note on their site saying they cant get back to you till late august.

Soo anyone know if its possible to do? Also iv misplaced my serial number how can you get it back?


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## spid (Nov 4, 2008)

I misplaced my serial number two computers ago - didn't matter how many times I asked for it to be resent I never got a reply. I used a very very old and slow laptop for ages until it died completely last year (couldn't put it on the other computers because no serial number). I think I asked for about 5 years?! 

I now use kintraks - £12 and fantastic customer service.


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

spid said:


> I misplaced my serial number two computers ago - didn't matter how many times I asked for it to be resent I never got a reply. I used a very very old and slow laptop for ages until it died completely last year (couldn't put it on the other computers because no serial number). I think I asked for about 5 years?!
> 
> I now use kintraks - £12 and fantastic customer service.


That's a bummer isn't it,actually I did contact them once with no no S-N and never got a reply.

Ill remember that bout the kintraks but if poss id rather not loose all my hours of work in BA


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## spid (Nov 4, 2008)

That's why I continued with a rubbish really slow laptop for a few years as I really didn't want to lose all my work. Had no choice once that laptop died. Best £12 ever spent on Kintraks. Just as good a BA - how about you get Kintraks anyway, and then double enter everything as you go, and then when you need it because you can't access BA anymore most of the work will be there?


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

spid said:


> That's why I continued with a rubbish really slow laptop for a few years as I really didn't want to lose all my work. Had no choice once that laptop died. Best £12 ever spent on Kintraks. Just as good a BA - how about you get Kintraks anyway, and then double enter everything as you go, and then when you need it because you can't access BA anymore most of the work will be there?


I will probably end up doing so spid,im going to buy a new monitor for pc tomorrow then get on my BA as iv got some peds I need to print off.Iv got the serial num in a diary somewhere but the kids have done something with it I think.

So do you find this KT really easy to use? You know how crap I am with computer stuff.


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## Cosmills (Oct 3, 2012)

Is this BA a super thing then ?? Does it do the work for ya or d you have to spend hours inputting all the info ?


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Cosmills said:


> Is this BA a super thing then ?? Does it do the work for ya or d you have to spend hours inputting all the info ?


You put the info in like you would have to with any other companies,but then its just click click click and you can print off ya peds just don't loose ya serial number! and save ya stuff to a usb memory stick..which I did but I killed that after bout a week I dropped lappy any crushed it


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## spotty cats (Jul 24, 2012)

On most programs if you click help, then about, it'll tell you what version you're using and any serial numbers. I don't use BA though (kintracks )


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

spotty cats said:


> On most programs if you click help, then about, it'll tell you what version you're using and any serial numbers. I don't use BA though (kintracks )


Ah right cheers sc's ill try that once new monitor comes I ordered it last night.

How do you find this KT's? Would you be lost without it?


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## spid (Nov 4, 2008)

Kintaks as just as good as BA - yes you have to type stuff in, but actually once I got used to it I found it easier.


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

spid said:


> Kintaks as just as good as BA - yes you have to type stuff in, but actually once I got used to it I found it easier.


really..hmm will have a look into it.


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## Cosmills (Oct 3, 2012)

Am just about to download KT ... If it does the same job I cannot see the point in spending £100 on BA ...... £12 is a bloody bargin


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## lymorelynn (Oct 4, 2008)

Can't answer your question WLBSH but I have Kintraks too :thumbup1: excellent value :thumbup1:


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

lymorelynn said:


> Can't answer your question WLBSH but I have Kintraks too :thumbup1: excellent value :thumbup1:


Cheers lynn..does it give you option to have your prefix on the top of the peds? And can you save all your stuff to a memory stick? Can you access it from different computers?


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## lymorelynn (Oct 4, 2008)

I have my prefix on pedigrees, I can save onto memory stick but I drop it into drop box (on my son's instruction) and from drop box I can access it anywhere.


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

lymorelynn said:


> I have my prefix on pedigrees, I can save onto memory stick but I drop it into drop box (on my son's instruction) and from drop box I can access it anywhere.


Can you so how do you access it from other pc? do you just pop in a password?

Very tempted to buy it now its just all that hour of work I did :cryin:


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## lymorelynn (Oct 4, 2008)

Never tried it from anywhere else but I think I just need a password for Drop Box


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

lymorelynn said:


> Never tried it from anywhere else but I think I just need a password for Drop Box


Oh right don't suppose you have any other pc in your house you could try from when you get the chance....


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## lymorelynn (Oct 4, 2008)

Sorry just my laptop


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

lymorelynn said:


> Sorry just my laptop


no worries someone else might pop up who can try.Cheers for info :thumbup1:


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## spotty cats (Jul 24, 2012)

we love bsh's said:


> How do you find this KT's? Would you be lost without it?


I have, and paid a lot for, Pedigree Explorer which is similar to BA I believe and have barely used it. I much prefer KT

I've got KT on my PC and laptop, and just save a backup onto a usb to transfer updated info to the other computer if needed. 
I didn't have a laptop when I first got KT and had no issues installing with the same reg number.

You may be able to backup BA and convert the files to KT, or the newer version Animal Breeder, I have both (same reg number) as they will eventually switch to only Animal Breeder.

The pedigrees can be customised. I include each cats name, breed, colour, reg # and microchip. I have my logo in one corner, and my details (name, website etc.) on the other side. You can include photos as well.
I also use a translucent Ocicat background from here http://www.kintraks.com/backgrounds/regbackgrounds.htm


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## Cosmills (Oct 3, 2012)

I have just downloaded KT... Filled in a few things and backed it up in Dropbox . Easy Sara .... 

Drop box is a free download ... Better than disk and USB sticks ..


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Cosmills said:


> I have just downloaded KT... Filled in a few things and backed it up in Dropbox . Easy Sara ....
> 
> Drop box is a free download ... Better than disk and USB sticks ..


Easy when you know how id have no idea how to do all that might be kidnapping you for a hour if I get stuck cm  iv ordered a usb memory stick so maze well store to that if its possible..but then how do I do that..grrr iv been shown before and it was just click click easy ill just have to play about.Gone download it tomoz payday,just checked my account an got £11.25 in lol bummer!


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## Cosmills (Oct 3, 2012)

we love bsh's said:


> Easy when you know how id have no idea how to do all that might be kidnapping you for a hour if I get stuck cm  iv ordered a usb memory stick so maze well store to that if its possible..but then how do I do that..grrr iv been shown before and it was just click click easy ill just have to play about.Gone download it tomoz payday,just checked my account an got £11.25 in lol bummer!


.... It's really easy... But I know you and IT .... If you want me to pop over .. Not a problem ..


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Cosmills said:


> .... It's really easy... But I know you and IT .... If you want me to pop over .. Not a problem ..


I hate new things always seem impossible but once you know how it easy,ill see how I get on.

Wonder how you would transfer all info from breeder assistant to kintraks


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## Cosmills (Oct 3, 2012)

we love bsh's said:


> I hate new things always seem impossible but once you know how it easy,ill see how I get on.
> 
> Wonder how you would transfer all info from breeder assistant to kintraks


Think you will need a program like Microsoft access to convert the data ... Not sure as never transferred data like that ...

I use Dropbox for everything ... Data can be accessed from any pc, phone or pad ...


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Cosmills said:


> Think you will need a program like Microsoft access to convert the data ... Not sure as never transferred data like that ...
> 
> I use Dropbox for everything ... Data can be accessed from any pc, phone or pad ...


iv never heard of this dropbox no idea how it works or what its for see tld you computers and me don't mix.


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## spotty cats (Jul 24, 2012)

we love bsh's said:


> Wonder how you would transfer all info from breeder assistant to kintraks


Export your data from BA
Breeders Assistant Pedigree Software

Then in kintracks, click on Exchange at the top, and import records. On the screen that pops up, select import from Other (csv), then click Open and find the location you saved the BA file to and it'll bring it into KT


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## lymorelynn (Oct 4, 2008)

we love bsh's said:


> iv never heard of this dropbox no idea how it works or what its for see tld you computers and me don't mix.


I can only do it because my youngest son is a geek


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

spotty cats said:


> Export your data from BA
> Breeders Assistant Pedigree Software
> 
> Then in kintracks, click on Exchange at the top, and import records


hmm thankyou very much scs I do hope its as easy as you make it sound ..but could I get onto the link you just sent from my lappy,cause my BA is on my pc which I cant get onto till the new monitor arrives.


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

lymorelynn said:


> I can only do it because my youngest son is a geek


Is he the one who got married if not can you send him here plz!


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Is this what you would do? get onto my BA click export somehow..then find an option somehow to save to a dropbox account..then go onto kintraks and import files from dropbox into kintraks somehow??


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## lymorelynn (Oct 4, 2008)

we love bsh's said:


> Is he the one who got married if not can you send him here plz!


No, that was his brother - this one is at University doing geeky stuff (electronic engineering with nanotechnology )


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

lymorelynn said:


> No, that was his brother - this one is at University doing geeky stuff (electronic engineering with nanotechnology )


well lucky you :thumbup1:


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## Cosmills (Oct 3, 2012)

spotty cats said:


> Export your data from BA
> Breeders Assistant Pedigree Software
> 
> Then in kintracks, click on Exchange at the top, and import records. On the screen that pops up, select import from Other (csv), then click Open and find the location you saved the BA file to and it'll bring it into KT


Well that sound easy ...


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## spotty cats (Jul 24, 2012)

we love bsh's said:


> Is this what you would do? get onto my BA click export somehow..then find an option somehow to save to a dropbox account..then go onto kintraks and import files from dropbox into kintraks somehow??


well I've never used dropbox, but that should work.

I save onto USB sticks when going between computers, so dropbox should work in a similar way


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## tincan (Aug 30, 2012)

Good luck ladies ...... My head is done in reading all this tech stuff .... I can't even post funny pics up ..... how sad is that :biggrin:.....


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

> No, that was his brother - this one is at University doing geeky stuff (electronic engineering with nanotechnology )


He'll be really big in nanotechnology


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## OrientalSlave (Jan 26, 2012)

we love bsh's said:


> <snip>
> Just checked my account an got £11.25 in lol bummer!


Mr Micawber would have been jealous. His would have *-*£11.25!


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

I trialled Kintracks and really liked it except for the pedigree certificates. There are things I just couldn't work out. Advice would be much welcomed from those with more experience. I couldn't work out a way to create a ped in boxes like a table and how do you put the red on the ped for champions? Are these extra features you get if you pay for the full version?


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## lymorelynn (Oct 4, 2008)

You need to put their championship status in the prefix box and it will automatically come up in red. The GCCF prefix should just be put in the name box along with the pedigree name.
I don't think you can do a pedigree layout using boxes though


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

Thanks for that. At least one question is answered. It's a shame they only ran to one very simple form for the ped layout but I guess that's why it's so cheap.


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Pinched other halfs phone to get on here iv killed my lappy trying to download drop box grrrr! So got to get that fixed now. So u can't have boxs on the peds tbh that rather puts me off.


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

> So u can't have boxs on the peds tbh that rather puts me off


It's a case of getting what you pay for I suppose. Creating a pretty 'front end' is where the hard work is on anything like this.


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## OrientalSlave (Jan 26, 2012)

havoc said:


> It's a case of getting what you pay for I suppose. Creating a pretty 'front end' is where the hard work is on anything like this.


Breeder's Assistant is quite good about how configurable a pedigree layout is. I spent ages tweaking one to my satisfaction.

I wish I could configure an input screen as well, as I'm gradually working through my old catalogues (Supreme ones first) inputting details of all the Oriental Selfs (except Foreign Whites) and Torties which is being quite illuminating.

I could do with a layout which matches the layout in the catalogues - there is lots of clicking from here to there to somewhere else.

It might help to make a display layout which matches as it will be easier to see the data is correct.


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## spid (Nov 4, 2008)

You can create a custom design for the peds (still no boxes though) BUT if you go on the FB page and ask he will look into it - I asked for something and it was in the next patch.


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

It is asking a lot for the pedigrees to be as good as on BA. When Access first came out the first thing I did was create my own equivalent of these breeder programs which is easy enough if you know how to set up a relational database. The pretty front end takes as long, if not longer than setting up the database.


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## OrientalSlave (Jan 26, 2012)

Some time back I was doing the web site for a friend, and to amuse myself I did a database and wrote code to generate the pedigrees for her website from it. I did it originally a very roundabout way, then really neatly using recursive code - code that calls itself.

I also did a database design for a cat (animal) pedigree database for my degree project but never got to grips enough with the PC tools for writing software to implement it. Writing a really good front-end isn't easy, and whilst a lot of BA isn't wonderful the way you can add a cat's sire or dam to their record (if you already have them in your database) is very smart.

Maybe I should try to get to grips with Visual C# again... Spin my own. It's fairly easy to extract one's data from BA.


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## spid (Nov 4, 2008)

I've just asked on Kintraks if he can put boxes on and he is looking at it - apparently you can on the HMTL version.


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## Cosmills (Oct 3, 2012)

I have just spent hours on kintrak ... Printed a ped and it looks shocking .... Think I need to play about with it abit more grrrrrrrr


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## spotty cats (Jul 24, 2012)

Doesn't make a difference to me if the pedigree has boxes or connecter lines (you can change the style of connectors), it's just a copy for me to give to the pet owner until the registrar mails out their official copy. 


The pedigree layout really shouldn't need playing with, at least I never have, the template makes it all line up fine.


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## OrientalSlave (Jan 26, 2012)

The pedigree GCCF breeders in the UK give the new owner is THE pedigree - they don't get one from the GCCF - so we want it to look good.

Just had a play with it, can it hold a list of breed numbers so one can automatically populate fields from it? It's very tedious to keep retyping them...

(BA isn't perfect here either. They supply a list but I'm having to keep amending the entries)


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

> Just had a play with it, can it hold a list of breed numbers so one can automatically populate fields from it?


I used a custom field for breed numbers. In fact I used custom field for most of what I wanted on the ped because I'm used to databases and assumed I'd need to do so. That's how I missed getting champions in red.



> it's just a copy for me to give to the pet owner until the registrar mails out their official copy


It's making a lot more sense to me now as to why this isn't a priority on the package. The breeder's pedigree is the only one our buyers get so the look is very important here.


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## spotty cats (Jul 24, 2012)

havoc said:


> It's making a lot more sense to me now as to why this isn't a priority on the package. The breeder's pedigree is the only one our buyers get so the look is very important here.


I just looked at my official pedigrees, they've got the same layout as my KT ones.

I find it strange that your pet owners don't get papers when buying a pedigree cat. That's what "papers" are, the pedigree/family tree with it's unique registration number.


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

> That's what "papers" are, the pedigree/family tree with it's unique registration number.


Not here. The official registration document gives the kitten and parents details only. The breeder supplies a four or five gen pedigree. We are only required to supply a three gen but most breeders do more.


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## OrientalSlave (Jan 26, 2012)

havoc said:


> Not here. The official registration document gives the kitten and parents details only. The breeder supplies a four or five gen pedigree. We are only required to supply a three gen but most breeders do more.


See my 'Genuine Papers' thread for examples of old & new GCCF registration documents. It gives parents only.

We have to give details of parents & grandparents including reg. nos. to register a litter and I presume the GCCF will check those are correct.

http://www.gccfcats.org/pdf/regapp.pdf


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

> I just looked at my official pedigrees, they've got the same layout as my KT ones.


Makes perfect sense. KT would naturally follow an 'official' design. Pedigree certs here are a matter of some pride for a breeder, expensive, high grade paper or card, beautifully designed and printed etc. The home computer has a lot to answer for


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## OrientalSlave (Jan 26, 2012)

havoc said:


> Makes perfect sense. KT would naturally follow an 'official' design. Pedigree certs here are a matter of some pride for a breeder, expensive, high grade paper or card, beautifully designed and printed etc. The home computer has a lot to answer for


It's a big improvement over hand-written ones. The example TT showed us was done by someone with a beautiful hand, but the one I got with my first Oriental (Errol) was badly-written and had quite a few errors. One was that 'Tzu' was spelt 'Taz', and I think I found at least one other one. The unsureness is because I got Errol in 2000. I wish I still had it to scan for you all!

You are right though that a lot of thought goes into many pedigrees. I spent hours getting the layout for mine just how I liked though I don't use especially high-quality paper. I will print them on 'cream' (it's a rather yellow cream) light-weight card. Lola's was on pink, Benny's on blue, but I was given a copy of Lola's on white paper as well so I could photocopy it. I've put her pedigree in BA now.

A shame Kintraks doesn't have a lookup table for the breed as in Orientals there is a vast pile of them - there are 16 basic colours (black, chocolate, cinnamon & their dilutes = 6, the tortie versions of those gives 12, then there is red, cream, apricot & caramel) and then each in the selfs / self torties, ticked, spotted, classic, mackerel, then silver versions, then the bicolours, then the pointed bicolours and lastly the Foreign White - a Siamese covered in white which bizarrely is shown in the Oriental section... Also many Orientals have a Siamese parent, so the 12 colours in Ocicats is a very simple situation!


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## havoc (Dec 8, 2008)

> A shame Kintraks doesn't have a lookup table for the breed


It's less than twelve quid. There's a lot would be nice but it ain't bad for the money :001_smile:


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## spotty cats (Jul 24, 2012)

OrientalSlave said:


> Also many Orientals have a Siamese parent, so the 12 colours in Ocicats is a very simple situation!


Yes very easy  even with Aby's and ticked pattern in some of my peds.

I use fancy paper for my peds, and use a nice border, fonts, and translucent breed photo so they are nicer than the official peds

The handwriting on TT's pedigree was gorgeous, I imagine somewhat rare to be that neat and precise.


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## OrientalSlave (Jan 26, 2012)

spotty cats said:


> <snip>
> 
> The handwriting on TT's pedigree was gorgeous, I imagine somewhat rare to be that neat and precise.


I wish mine was half as good as that was - mine is irregular and unclear. Maybe it was written by someone who had studied calligraphy. Maybe there used to be a market for people with such lovely handwriting to fill out important documents like pedigrees!


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

spid said:


> I've just asked on Kintraks if he can put boxes on and he is looking at it - apparently you can on the HMTL version.


That's good does it give you an option to buy that mode when ordering?

I know what happened to my lappy I got a virus when trying to download dropbox so its in the shop now been restored 

Cant wait to try the kintracks though see what you are all talking about


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## we love bsh's (Mar 28, 2011)

Well my new monitor arrived for the pc so was able to use my BA whch in all honesty i do love so guess il use this till the pc dies,if i can find my serial number maybe i can get in touch with BA to get a password to use it from other computers.


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