Everything a UK livestock farm has to keep on top of, in one place: the statutory registration rules, the Red Tractor records, and the money. Sourced from GOV.UK, Livestock Information Ltd, Red Tractor and HMRC directly, written the way you would explain it to the farmer next door.
A UK livestock farm's paperwork splits into two halves: statutory compliance (birth, movement and death registration, the medicine book, Red Tractor assurance) and the money (VAT, Making Tax Digital, invoicing, wages). These guides cover both, in plain English, with sources linked at the bottom of every page.
Nobody goes farming because they enjoy the paperwork. But a working livestock farm carries a real statutory load: a calf passport applied for within 27 days of birth, a movement reported within 3 days, a medicine book that stands up to a Red Tractor assessor, a VAT return filed the way HMRC now requires. Miss a deadline and the cost is not abstract. An animal without a passport cannot be sold. A late VAT filing under Making Tax Digital is a genuine offence, not a slap on the wrist.
The guides below answer the specific questions that come up, one at a time, sourced from the actual government and scheme guidance rather than paraphrased from someone else's blog post. They are organised into three groups, roughly in the order a new keeper runs into them: the animals first, then the assurance records, then the money.
None of this is static either. England is mid-way through replacing its cattle tracing system, the Making Tax Digital thresholds step down every year until 2028, and electronic cattle ID becomes mandatory from 2027. A rule that was accurate last year can be slightly out of date this year, so every guide carries an updated date and a source list, and gets revisited when the underlying rule actually changes rather than left to go stale.
The rules that govern registering an animal's life, from birth to the day it leaves the farm.
What the law requires when an animal dies on farm: reporting the death, testing where required, and disposing of the carcass the right way.
Keeping the medicine book and the wider assurance file audit-ready, year-round, not just before a visit.
VAT, income tax, and choosing software that actually fits a farm, not a generic small business.
FarmHQ is a livestock compliance and bookkeeping app, and the two founders spent enough years dealing with this paperwork themselves, one on a real farm, one building AI systems, to know most of it is genuinely just confusing rather than complicated. These guides exist because the official sources are accurate but hard to read quickly on a phone in a yard, and most of what fills that gap online is written by people who have never actually filed a cattle passport application.
Every guide is useful on its own whether or not you ever open the app. Where FarmHQ solves the specific problem a guide describes, it says so once, plainly, and moves on. If a rule changes, the guide gets updated rather than left as a dead page, and the updated date at the top of each one reflects that, not just a copyright year nobody bothers to touch. We wrote up why we built this section before we built more of the app on the blog, if you want that story.
Statutory livestock registration (births, movements, deaths), a medicine book with product, batch, dose and withdrawal for every treatment, Red Tractor assurance records if the farm is a member, VAT returns and Making Tax Digital filing, invoices, and staff timesheets. It splits into two halves: compliance with government and assurance schemes, and the money.
The facts are the same, sourced from GOV.UK, Livestock Information Ltd, Red Tractor and HMRC directly, with a source list at the bottom of every guide. What differs is the writing: plain language aimed at a working farmer reading on a phone, not scheme-standard legal wording.
No. Every guide stands on its own and answers the question in the title whether or not you ever use the app. Where FarmHQ is relevant to a specific rule, it is mentioned once, plainly, not pushed.