How to track livestock assets for ranching operation

Two thoughts come to mind. These are hard and fast assets and are inventory when purchased. You could create a sub account for each cow, but that can get unwieldy and cumbersome - but you could create a Class for each cow or batch of cows purchased (or born on farm)

You would have many more classes than I did with fruit in our operation but it is a decent way to track income and expenses related to different farming enterprises.

In the COA you might break down cattle asset account by breed but the classes will do that and more. You can have a class for Black Angus Fall Purchase 2018 and Black Angus Spring 2019 and both could be sub classes of Angus, you can get as detailed as you need to know the eventual gain or loss on each purchase

Thank you for your response.  However, my intent is not to track costs and profit and loss for each cow, my intent is merely to track assets for depreciation purposes and keep the Asset account values accurate.  Will the Asset Tracker produce a report that will list total current value of cows, itemized,  if I list each one separately when/if purchased and disposal date?

There's a book called The QuickBooks Farm Accounting Cookbook, Volume IV which deals with cash basis fixed asset accounting in farming/ranching. It uses Inventory Part Items set up in a special way (which only works for cash basis records), to keep track of purchase costs, sales, trade-ins, etc., of individual fixed assets --a group of breeding livestock (or individual animals if you want), machinery, buildings, etc. I think it might be the solution you're looking for.