Honest Cattle® · Legal
Terms of Use
Effective October 3, 2026
The short version. Everything on honestcattle.net is free to read and to use on your own ranch or in your own business. Quote us and link to us, with credit. Do not copy the site, resell our work, scrape it in bulk, or build a competing product from it. Nothing here is trading, hedging, insurance or legal advice.
These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) govern your use of honestcattle.net, the Honest Cattle Weekly Cattle Market Forecast, the Honest Cattle Market Index, the county pages, data tables, downloadable workbooks, calculators, email editions and any other content or tool we publish (together, the “Services”). By using the Services you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Services.
1. Who we are
Honest Cattle® is a publication of Farm Animal Transparency, LLC, a Montana limited liability company (“we,” “us,” “our”). It is written and run by Dirk Adams, a Montana rancher. Honest Cattle is independent: it is not affiliated with any auction market, video sale house, packer, broker, insurer or government agency, and it holds no futures or options positions. “Honest Cattle” is a registered trademark of Farm Animal Transparency, LLC (U.S. Reg. No. 8,399,671).
2. What you may do
We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to read, download and print the Services for your own personal use and for use in your own farm, ranch or livestock business. You may:
- quote short passages, individual figures or a single table, with credit to “Honest Cattle (honestcattle.net)” and, online, a link to the page you took it from;
- share links to our pages and posts;
- use our downloadable workbooks and calculators to make your own decisions.
3. What you may not do
Without our written permission you may not:
- copy, republish or redistribute substantial portions of the Services, in any medium, whether or not for payment;
- sell, license or charge for access to our content, data or workbooks, or include them in a paid product or service;
- scrape, crawl, harvest or bulk-download the Services with automated tools, or use the Services or any of our content to train, fine-tune or ground an artificial-intelligence model, except as our robots.txt file expressly permits;
- build a competing forecast, index, data product or publication from our content, data compilations or methodology descriptions;
- remove or alter our name, copyright notice or source attributions, or present our work as your own;
- use the Honest Cattle name, logo or the names of our products in a way that suggests we endorse you or that you are affiliated with us;
- interfere with the operation or security of the site.
4. Ownership
The Services are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark and other intellectual-property laws. Farm Animal Transparency, LLC owns or licenses all rights in the Services, including the text, forecasts, analysis, charts, graphics, page design, software and code, the structure and selection of our data compilations, the Honest Cattle Market Index (HCMI) and its methodology, the Honest Cattle Forage Score, the Calf Check calculator and the other ranch tools, and the names Honest Cattle®, Honest Cattle Market Index and HCMI.
Much of our raw material comes from public sources such as USDA Agricultural Marketing Service market news, USDA NASS and ERS, the CME Group, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Montana Department of Livestock. Government data remains public. What we claim is our selection, arrangement, cleaning, analysis and presentation of it, and the original writing and tools built around it.
5. Citing the Honest Cattle Market Index
You may cite a published HCMI value, with its date, as “Honest Cattle Market Index (HCMI), honestcattle.net.” You may not publish a running series of HCMI values, recompute or redistribute the index, or use the HCMI name for an index of your own.
6. No professional advice
The Services are information, not advice. They are not trading, hedging, investment, insurance, tax, legal or veterinary advice, and nothing on the site is an offer or recommendation to buy or sell any commodity, futures contract, option, insurance product or animal. Honest Cattle is not a registered investment adviser, commodity trading advisor, broker, or licensed insurance agent. Decisions about marketing cattle, Livestock Risk Protection and other risk-management tools are yours to make, with your own advisers. See our Disclaimer.
7. Accuracy and timing
We work hard to be accurate, we name our sources, and we grade our own forecasts in print. Even so, markets move, agencies revise their numbers, and reports arrive late or not at all. We do not promise that any figure is correct, complete or current, and a forecast is a probability, not a promise. Check the date on every number before you rely on it.
8. Use of artificial intelligence
Some of our content and tools are prepared with the assistance of artificial-intelligence software and reviewed by a person before publication. AI-assisted material can contain errors. Use it with that in mind.
9. Third-party sites and data
We link to and draw on third-party websites, reports and data feeds. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, accuracy or availability. Their own terms govern your use of them.
10. Email editions
If you receive the weekly forecast by email, you may stop at any time by replying with “unsubscribe” or by using the link in the message. How we handle your email address is described in our Privacy Policy.
11. Disclaimer of warranties
The Services are provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent permitted by law, Farm Animal Transparency, LLC and Dirk Adams disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, timeliness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
12. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither Farm Animal Transparency, LLC nor Dirk Adams will be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, livestock value or data, arising out of or related to your use of or inability to use the Services, even if we have been told such damages are possible. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Services will not exceed one hundred dollars ($100).
13. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Farm Animal Transparency, LLC and Dirk Adams from any claim, loss or expense, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of the Services or your breach of these Terms.
14. Changes and termination
We may change these Terms or the Services at any time. A new effective date at the top of this page marks a change, and your continued use after that date means you accept it. We may suspend or end access to the Services for anyone who violates these Terms. Sections 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 13 and 15 survive termination.
15. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Montana, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute relating to the Services will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Montana, and you consent to their jurisdiction.
16. Contact
Questions about these Terms, and requests for permission to reuse our work, go to Dirk Adams at dirkadams@mac.com.