Record keeping is the part of livestock farming nobody got into the job for, and the part an inspector will ask about first. Whether you run a hundred sucklers, a flock of ewes, or a few pigs in the back field, UK law expects you to keep an accurate, up to date account of the animals on your holding, how they move, and what medicines they receive.

This guide pulls the whole picture together in one place: what every livestock keeper has to record, what's specific to cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, and the medicine and mortality records that catch most farms out at inspection. It's written for working farms, not lawyers, so treat it as a practical map rather than the final legal word. Rules change, and the official source is always GOV.UK. Where a deadline or figure matters, we link straight to it.

The records every livestock keeper must keep

Before you get to the species detail, there's a baseline that applies to almost everyone who keeps farmed animals in Great Britain.

A County Parish Holding (CPH) number for every piece of land you keep animals on. This is your holding's identity on every form, movement and register. You get one from the Rural Payments Agency.
A herd or flock register (often called the holding register) listing the animals kept, births, deaths and movements on and off. It must be kept up to date and available for inspection, and retained for several years after an animal leaves.
Movement records for every animal that arrives or leaves, reported to the national system within the required window.
Veterinary medicine records for everything you administer, including withdrawal periods (more on this below, because it's where farms lose marks).
Mortality records for fallen stock, with proof of approved disposal.

Get those five right and you've covered the spine of livestock compliance. The species sections below add the specifics.

Cattle: passports, the herd register, and movements

Cattle are the most heavily regulated species, a legacy of the BSE era. Every animal must be individually identified, hold a cattle passport, and be traceable from birth to death.

What you have to keep on top of:

Register every birth and apply for the passport within the legal window (currently 27 days of birth in England, after which a calf cannot legally move). Confirm the latest timing on GOV.UK.
Report every movement on and off the holding within three days, and respect the standstill rules that pause movements off your farm after stock arrives.
Report deaths and return the passport within the required period, usually seven days.
Keep the herd register current, including the on-farm details that never go to the national database but that an inspector will still ask to see.

The bigger change on the horizon is the move from the British Cattle Movement Service to the new Livestock Information Service (LIS). It changes how, not whether, you report, and it's worth understanding before it lands. We've written that up in full: BCMS to LIS in 2026: what cattle keepers must do.

The other shift coming for cattle is hardware. Bovine electronic identification (bEID) becomes mandatory for new animals from 2027, replacing the old visual-only tags. If you're buying tags or planning replacements, read preparing for bEID cattle tags first so you don't pay twice.

On top of traceability, cattle holdings carry TB testing records and, in many herds, BVD status records. Both are inspected, and both are far easier to produce when the test dates and results sit alongside each animal rather than in a drawer.

Sheep and goats: EID, the flock register, and the annual inventory

Sheep and goats run on electronic identification too. The headline obligations:

Identify every animal to the current EID standard, with the right tag combination for its age and intended destination.
Keep a flock or holding register of the animals kept and every movement on and off.
Report movements to the national system within the required window. In England this has run through ARAMS, and like cattle it is moving under the Livestock Information umbrella, so expect the reporting route to change while the obligation stays the same.
Take an annual inventory (a snapshot of the animals on your holding on the set date each year) and keep it on file.

Goats follow broadly the same identification and movement logic as sheep, with their own tag rules. The GOV.UK sheep and goats guidance is the source of truth for tag specifications, which change more often than the underlying duty to record.

Pigs: herd marks and eAML2 movements

Pigs work differently again. Instead of individual lifetime identity, pigs carry a herd mark and are identified by temporary or slap marks for movement.

Register as a pig keeper and get your herd mark.
Record and report movements through the electronic movement system (eAML2), within the required timescale.
Keep your herd register of stock on the holding, updated at the set intervals.

The principle is identical to cattle and sheep: the holding always knows what it has, and every movement leaves a trail.

Veterinary medicine records: the part inspectors scrutinise most

If there's one area where farms lose marks, it's the medicine book. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) requires you to record every veterinary medicine you administer, and the AHDB Medicine Hub is increasingly where assurance schemes expect that data to live.

For every product given, you need:

The product name and batch number, and its expiry.
The date administered and the quantity used.
Which animal or group received it.
Who administered it.
The withdrawal period and the date the animal is clear for meat or milk.

You're required to keep these records for at least five years, even for animals that have since left the holding. The withdrawal period is the bit that carries real risk: send an animal to slaughter or put milk in the tank inside the withdrawal window and you have a food-safety failure, not just a paperwork one.

This is exactly the kind of thing that's painful on paper and trivial in software, because the system can count the withdrawal forward from the dose and flag the animal until it clears. We've put together a practical medicine book inspection checklist for what assessors actually look for, and Agrianta's inventory and medicine module keeps the book, the stock levels and the withdrawal countdown in one place.

Fallen stock and mortalities

When an animal dies, the record doesn't stop. You must:

Record the death in your herd or flock register.
Report cattle deaths to the national database and return the passport.
Dispose of the carcass through an approved route. On-farm burial of fallen stock is not permitted under the Animal By-Products Regulations, so you use an approved collector or knacker and keep the documentation.

Keep the collection notes. "We had a few losses over winter" is not an answer an inspector accepts without the paperwork to match the register.

Beyond the legal minimum: farm assurance

Legal records are the floor. If you sell into the supply chain, your assurance scheme sets a higher bar.

Red Tractor wants a documented herd or flock health plan, medicine records, movement records, and evidence of vet involvement, all current and all to hand at the visit.
Organic and other schemes layer on their own record demands.
The funded Animal Health and Welfare Pathway vet visits and reviews produce records of their own that are worth keeping with the rest. We've covered what the Pathway involves separately.

The common thread is that assurance assessors don't just want the records to exist, they want them produced quickly and consistently. A farm that can pull a clean medicine report and movement history in minutes passes a smoother visit than one reconstructing it from memory and a shoebox. Sharing the right records straight to your vet, rather than rekeying them, also keeps the health plan honest, which is what vet record sharing is for.

What an inspector actually checks

Across schemes and statutory visits, the questions rhyme:

Does the register match the animals on the ground? Counts, identities and recent movements should reconcile.
Are movements reported on time? Late or missing reports are the most common finding.
Is the medicine book complete and current, with withdrawal periods correct and no animal in-withdrawal having left for slaughter?
Can you evidence fallen stock disposal?
Is your health plan real and followed, not a document written once and filed?

Notice that four of the five are really one thing: can you produce accurate, current records on demand. That's a record-keeping problem, not a farming one.

Paper, spreadsheet, or software?

Plenty of farms still run on a paper register and a medicine book, and that's legal. The question is whether it's the best use of your time and your risk tolerance.

Paper is fine until the day it isn't: a missed movement deadline, a withdrawal period counted wrong, a book lost to a flood, or an inspection spent reconstructing six months of moves. Spreadsheets fix the legibility but not the deadlines or the withdrawal maths, and they don't talk to LIS.

Software earns its place by doing the parts you shouldn't have to remember. It counts withdrawal periods forward automatically, flags movement deadlines before they pass, keeps the register reconciled, and produces the reports an assessor asks for in a couple of taps. Good farm software also works offline in the field and syncs later, so the record gets made at the pen, not from memory that evening. If you want the wider case for going digital, we've made it in why farm management software matters.

That's the whole point of Agrianta's compliance tooling and day-to-day operations: the legal records you have to keep anyway become a by-product of running the farm, instead of a separate evening job you dread.

Record keeping will never be the reason you farm. But getting it right protects everything else, your assurance status, your slaughter income, your time, and your peace of mind at inspection. Build the habit, lean on tools that do the counting for you, and the paperwork stops being the thing you worry about.

Want to see how Agrianta keeps your registers, movements and medicine book inspection-ready? Start your free trial and get 30 days with every module unlocked. You won't be charged until your trial ends.

Questions about compliance record keeping for your farm? Drop us a line at hello@agrianta.com and we'll do our best to help.

Livestock Record Keeping in the UK: What You Must Track