It is a question that comes up somewhere online most months, usually with a deadline attached. The medicine book has run out of pages, an inspection is booked, and nobody wants to find out the hard way that the answer was no.
The short version: yes, you can keep your medicine records electronically, and you do not have to use a printed book at all. But there is a practical catch that the legislation does not mention, and it is the thing that actually goes wrong on inspection day.
What the rules actually say
The Veterinary Medicines Regulations require anyone keeping food-producing animals to record what was given, to which animals, and when. They do not require a particular format.
The government's own guidance is explicit that the records may be kept electronically. There is no approved book, no mandated stationery, and no requirement to buy a replacement when the one you have runs out. A spreadsheet is fine. Farm software is fine. An ordinary hardback notebook is fine.
That last one is worth stating plainly, because it is the cheapest answer if you are two days from an inspection with no pages left. One keeper described exactly that situation and the outcome: they had been writing records into an ordinary A4 hardback rather than the official book, the inspector saw it, and said it was fine so long as a dedicated book was being used.
The format is not what is being assessed. The completeness is.
What has to be in it
Whatever you write it in, each treatment of a food-producing animal needs:
- The product name and, in practice, the batch number
- The date it was administered
- How much was given
- The withdrawal period that applies
- Which animal or group was treated, identifiable from the record
- Who administered it, where that was not you
You also need your purchase records: what you bought, when, how much, and who supplied it. Those two sets have to reconcile. If your medicine cabinet shows more product going in than the treatment records account for coming out, that gap is what gets picked up.
How long you have to keep it
- Veterinary medicine records for food-producing animals: five years. This applies even if the animals have long since left the holding.
- Cattle holding register: ten years.
This is one of the strongest practical arguments for getting off paper, and it has nothing to do with convenience. A book that has to survive ten years in a farm office is a book that can be lost, soaked, or burned. Five and ten years is a long time to be relying on one physical object.
"But will the inspector accept it?"
This is the real question, and it deserves a more honest answer than the rules alone give.
Farm assurance schemes accept electronic records. Red Tractor's standards refer to records being kept on paper and/or electronically, and the direction of travel is firmly digital — the scheme launched geo-stamped photo evidence in its portal in 2026, and the pig sector has had a compulsory electronic medicine book for years.
But the experience on the ground is genuinely mixed, and it is worth knowing that before you are stood in the kitchen with an assessor. Keepers running herd software have reported inspections passing on screen records alone for years at a stretch. Others have been asked to produce printouts, and at least one was asked by Trading Standards to print thirty pages of movement records and post them in.
Both of those things are true at once. The rules permit electronic records; individual assessors still sometimes want paper in front of them.
The one rule that matters
So here is the practical version, and it resolves the contradiction:
Keep the records however you like. Be able to print them on demand.
If your system can produce a clean, dated, complete printout of your medicine records covering the period being assessed, the paper-versus-digital argument never happens. You are not asking the assessor to accept your software. You are handing them the thing they asked for.
This is why "can I use a spreadsheet" has a better answer than most people expect, and why "can I use an app" depends entirely on the app. A spreadsheet prints. Farm software that can export or print a medicine register prints. An app that shows you a scrolling list on a phone with no export is the one that causes an argument, and it is worth checking that before you rely on it rather than during an inspection.
The same logic applies to the herd register question that comes up just as often. Software is permitted. Being able to print it is what makes the permission useful.
What you are actually doing by hand
Whichever you choose, three jobs stay with you, and they are the three that go wrong under inspection:
- Working out the clear date. Not the withdrawal period printed on the box, but the date this animal, treated on this day, is actually clear.
- Reconciling treatments against purchases. What came in has to account for what went out.
- Keeping it all for five years, and being able to produce it.
A paper sheet does none of these for you. A spreadsheet does the arithmetic if you build the formulas. This is the part Agrianta is built to do: scan the bottle, the withdrawal comes off the VMD register, the clear date is calculated and counted down, stock comes off as you record the treatment, and the whole lot prints when somebody asks for it.
If you would rather stay on paper, that is a legitimate choice and our free medicine record template has the same columns. The point is knowing which jobs you have kept for yourself.
If your book is full and you have an inspection this week
In order:
- Do not buy time you do not have. You do not need to source a replacement book before the assessor arrives.
- Continue the records now, in whatever you will actually keep up with. A hardback notebook, a spreadsheet, or software. Do not leave a gap while you decide. If you need something on paper today, our free medicine record template is A4, hole-punch safe, and carries every field listed above.
- Keep the full book. It is part of your five-year record, not something to be replaced and discarded.
- Make the join obvious. Note the date the old book ends and the new record begins, in both. A visible handover reads as diligence; an unexplained gap reads as a missing month.
- Print what you have if the new records are digital, and have it with the old book.
A note for readers in Ireland
The same principle applies, though the vocabulary differs. What is called the medicine book here is the blue book or the remedies section of the herd register, and medicines are animal remedies. Bord Bia inspections likewise assess whether the records are complete and reconcile with purchases, not whether they were written in a particular booklet.
The recurring question is identical, right down to the timing: the remedies pages fill up before the rest of the register does, and it always seems to happen the week an inspection is booked.
Common questions
Do I have to record a medicine that has no withdrawal period?
Record it. The recording requirement attaches to the treatment, not to whether a withdrawal applies, and a zero-withdrawal product still needs to be accounted for against your purchase records. This question comes up constantly and deserves its own answer, which we will cover separately.
Can I write it up before the inspection rather than at the time?
The requirement is to record the treatment, and records are expected to be kept up to date. Beyond the rules, a book filled in from memory in one sitting tends to look like one, and the gaps it creates between treatments and purchases are exactly what gets scrutinised.
Does my vet's record count as mine?
Not automatically. Where the vet administers the treatment they may enter the record themselves, or supply it to you in writing, in which case entering it becomes your responsibility. A prescription sitting in a drawer is not a treatment record.
Can I use photos of the bottle instead?
As a memory aid, useful. As the record, no. A photograph does not carry the animal identity, the quantity given, or the withdrawal, and those are the fields being checked.
The bottom line
A full medicine book is not a compliance problem. It is a stationery problem that people mistake for a compliance problem, usually at the worst possible moment.
You can move to a spreadsheet, to software, or to a fresh notebook, today, without asking anyone's permission. Keep the old book, make the handover visible, record the same fields you always did, and make sure that whatever you choose can put it on paper when somebody asks.
Sources
- Record keeping requirements for veterinary medicines - VMD / GOV.UK
- The Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2024, Part 10 - legislation.gov.uk
- Template holding register for cattle keepers - GOV.UK
- Medicine Administration Record (ruminants) - Red Tractor