Legal duties: registration, vaccinations, welfare

In short

• Register your holding and animals before you bring home your first cow, goat, sheep, pig or (in the UK and Ireland) poultry.
• Identify your animals (ear tags, passport, microchip) and report births, movements and deaths within the deadlines your country sets.
• Compulsory vaccinations and tests (for example bovine TB testing in the UK and Ireland, rabies in dogs in the US and Canada) are set by the authorities.
• You must report a suspected notifiable disease to your vet or the animal health authority. Hiding it is an offence and dangerous.
• Prescription medicines, medicine records and withdrawal periods are a duty for small herds too.
• Welfare: water, feed, shelter, care for a sick animal; euthanasia only by a vet; dead animals disposed of under the rules.

What's inside

Chapters

1. How to keep up with the rules
2. Registering the holding
3. Identification and animal registers
4. Movements, buying, shows and transport
5. Compulsory vaccinations and tests
6. Reporting disease
7. Medicines, records and withdrawal periods
8. Animal welfare
9. Dead animals and animal by-products
10. The keeper's liability
11. Common mistakes
12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

• Animal register
• Movement record
• Medicine and withdrawal record
• Calendar of legal duties
• Cost calculator for legal duties
• Contacts and when to call the vet at once
• Inspection ready