There is no Red Tractor approved software list to pick from, so the choice is yours. This guide sets out which records the standards name, what good enough looks like, and what to check before you pay for anything.
Software for Red Tractor records should hold the medicine book fields (product, batch, dose, withdrawal period and animal or group), keep them for five years, work without signal in the yard, and put any record in front of an assessor on the day. Check who can edit, whether changes are logged, and whether you can export everything. Software does not make you compliant on its own: the standard is about whether the records are complete and true. See the medicine book fields first.
It should do one job well: keep the records the standards name, complete and findable, for as long as you are required to hold them. Everything else is a bonus. Red Tractor does not publish an approved list of record-keeping software, and its standards do not ask for any particular tool. The beef and lamb standard for medicine administration records says they can be paper and/or electronic, and that the information does not need to sit in one place, as long as you can show how it fits together.
That gives you a plain test. After a year of use, could you put your hand on any treatment, health plan review, feed delivery or movement, and show it to an assessor within the visit? If a system makes that easier than your current one, it earns its fee. If it only looks tidy, it does not.
We read the Red Tractor beef and lamb standards, February 2025, and the details below come from them. Dairy, pigs and other sectors have their own standards, so check the one that applies to you. Our records pack guide puts the full list in one place, and the audit checklist shows what an assessor works through on the day.
On the beef and lamb standards, the named records are a short list. Each one below carries its standard code so you can find the wording.
Some records depend on what you do. The standard asks for calibration records for fertiliser application equipment (EC.10) and for testing and calibration of plant protection product equipment (EC.7), which only matters if you spread or spray. Red Tractor's beef and lamb templates page lists 32 templates, examples and guides, including a sprayer calibration record and a vermin site survey.
Water and cleaning are mostly checked on the walk round, not from paper. Do not buy software to track records nobody asked for.
Medicine records are the usual starting point, and the administration standard (AM.6) is marked KEY, which means a failure carries more weight. It asks for the medicine, date of administration, quantity, meat withdrawal period, the animal or group, batch number, number of animals treated, date treatment finished, date the animal is fit for human consumption, who gave it and the reason. Purchase records (AM.5) add supplier name and address, expiry date and batch number. Our medicine book guide explains each field in plain words.
Good enough means every row is complete and true. A messy but complete set of papers beats a tidy book with gaps. The guidance says routine group treatments such as vaccines need not be entered one animal at a time: a list in the veterinary health plan with the necessary information will do, if it can be matched to your other records and your purchase records. An animal treated for a specific problem still needs its own entry.
Keep it for 5 years, and keep it readable. GOV.UK says medicine records may be kept electronically, must be durable and permanent, and must be made available for inspection on request. Our 5-year rule guide covers why paper often fails that test, and turning a vet invoice into an entry shows where each detail comes from.
All three can pass. The standard allows the holding register on paper, on computer or a mix, and says the register cannot only be held in the national database. So the question is not which is allowed, it is which one you will keep up in a cold shed at the end of a long day.
Paper suits a small herd or flock with few treatments and one person writing. Its weakness is five years of damp, fading ink and the one person who knows where the old books are moving on. A monthly photo of each page, stored safely, is a cheap fix.
A spreadsheet suits a farm with a farm secretary who is comfortable with one. Red Tractor's own templates are the sensible base, and we publish a free medicine book template with a column for every field above. The weakness is that nothing stops a blank cell or records who changed what, and a failed laptop takes the book with it unless you back up.
An app suits a farm with several people recording, patchy signal and a lot of events in lambing or calving. It can catch a missing batch number on the spot, which paper never will. The trade-off is cost, and depending on one supplier. Our farm software guide covers the wider market.
Try each of these with your own awkward records, not the supplier's demo data.
These are the suppliers' own statements as of October 2026. We have not tested any of them.
Spreadsheets and templates. Red Tractor offers free beef and lamb templates, including medicine purchase, administration and disposal records and a training record. Nothing checks them for you.
Herdwatch. Its UK page says it works offline and syncs later, and offers a free version that downloads animals from BCMS, ScotEID and Nifais, a free trial, and paid plans by quote. Its compliance page says it is built around Red Tractor record-keeping requirements for dairy and beef and lamb, offers withdrawal period reminders and one-tap reports for assessors. See our Herdwatch comparison.
Farmplan and TELUS. Farm Contractor reported that in June 2023 Farmplan's livestock software customers were moved to Herdwatch, while its financial, cropping and hardware customers were not affected. Our Farmplan and TELUS guide has the detail.
FarmHQ. We make it, so weigh this accordingly. It is in beta. Its medicine book holds product, batch, dose, withdrawal period and animal ID, keeps records five years and exports them, according to our whitepaper. It also shows a live readiness score against your Red Tractor standard. Ask Farmer Joe drafts entries and you confirm them. No farm has run it for a full year yet.
No. Software holds records, it does not make them true. An assessor tests whether what is written down matches what happened on the farm, and a perfect app full of guesses fails the same as a tatty book full of guesses. Do not fill a blank from memory: ask the vet in writing and note it.
Software cannot do the parts that are not records. The health plan has to be signed, dated and reviewed annually by your vet, and the standard checks things on the ground, from a locked medicine store to clean troughs. A tool can remind you of the review date. It cannot do the review.
A simple test: once a month, pick three treatments at random and trace each from the vet invoice to the medicine book to the animal. If that is quick, the tool is working. If an assessor finds a gap, our guide to fixing a Red Tractor non-conformance sets out what happens next.
One more date to note. Red Tractor opened a consultation on the beef and lamb and dairy standards on 22 September 2026, closing 3 November 2026. It says nothing changes until 2027, and proposes replacing the health plan with an annual livestock health review and a 12-month action plan. Keep working to the February 2025 standards until the final version is published.
There is no single best, and Red Tractor does not publish an approved list. The standards allow paper, spreadsheet or electronic records, so choose by what you will keep up. Check that it holds the medicine book fields, keeps records for 5 years, works offline and lets you produce any record for an assessor on the day. Try it with your own records first.
Yes. The beef and lamb standards say the holding register can be paper, computer or both, and the medicine administration records can be paper and/or electronic. The information can also sit across several documents, if you can show how it fits together. A spreadsheet works if it is complete, backed up and available on the day of the assessment.
Yes. Red Tractor's beef and lamb page lists 32 templates, examples and guides, including medicine purchase, administration and disposal records, an antibiotic collation, a training record and the vet health and performance review. The page does not say you must use them. Other sectors, including dairy, have their own sets on the Red Tractor website.
On the beef and lamb standards, medicine purchase records and medicine administration records are each kept for 5 years. GOV.UK also says medicine records for food-producing animals must be kept for at least 5 years. Feed purchase records are kept for 2 years, and training records for 2 years after the person leaves.
Not on its own. It can flag a missing batch number or a late review, which helps. But the assessor tests whether your records are complete and true, and also checks the farm itself, such as medicine storage and the signed health plan. Software is a tool for keeping records, not a guarantee of a pass.