When an animal dies on a UK cattle holding, three separate things are due within 7 days: telling BCMS, returning the passport, and updating your own register. Here is what the rule actually requires, and where a fourth clock, for BSE testing, can start running much sooner.
A cattle death must be reported to BCMS, the animal's passport returned, and your holding register updated, all within 7 days of the date of death. If the animal was over 48 months old and did not die at a slaughterhouse, it must also be tested for BSE: contact an approved collector within 24 hours of death, with the carcass reaching an approved sampling site within a further 48 hours. Miss the reporting window and BCMS can restrict movements on the rest of your herd.
Cattle identification law does not treat a death as one event with one deadline. It treats it as three separate obligations that happen to share the same 7-day window: report the death to the British Cattle Movement Service, return the animal's registration document (usually its passport) so it arrives with BCMS, and record the death in your own holding register. All three run from the date of death, which counts as day one, the same convention used for the 27-day passport rule and the 3-day movement rule.
How you report changes what you have to do with the passport itself. Report online through CTS Online, by a compatible farm software package, or by phone (if the animal carries UK official ear tags), and BCMS fills in the death details for you once the report lands, you do not need to complete that section yourself. Report by post instead, and you must fill in the death details section of the passport or certificate of registration before sending it, so it still arrives within the 7 days.
If the animal was over 48 months old at death and did not die at a slaughterhouse for human consumption, a fourth deadline applies on top of the three reporting obligations, and it moves much faster than 7 days. You must contact an approved collector within 24 hours of death to arrange delivery, and the carcass must then reach an approved TSE sampling site within a further 48 hours, roughly 72 hours from death to sampling in total. This is a separate, narrower rule from the general reporting window, and it is covered in full, including who pays for the test and what a result actually means, in the BSE testing guide.
Cattle under 48 months at death do not need TSE testing. You still owe BCMS the standard 7-day report, and the carcass still has to leave the farm through an approved fallen stock route rather than being buried, which is the subject of the disposal rules guide.
Report online or by phone rather than by post. It is not just faster, it removes a step: BCMS completes the death section of the passport on their end once your report lands, so there is one less form for you to fill in correctly under pressure.
There is no grace period built into the rule. Miss the 7-day reporting window and BCMS can place movement restrictions on the rest of your herd until your records are corrected, which in practical terms means animals you had no intention of moving suddenly cannot be sold or transferred until the paperwork catches up. In more serious or repeated cases, keepers can be prosecuted. Neither outcome is automatic on day 8, but neither is it rare, and there is no appeal route built around "the calving season was busy" the way there sometimes is for a late passport application.
The animals most likely to slip through are the quiet ones: a death discovered during a routine check rather than witnessed, an older animal found in a far field days after it actually died, or a death that happens while the person who normally does the paperwork is away. None of these change the deadline. The clock runs from the date of death, not the date you found out about it, so an animal found late is already partway through, or past, its 7 days the moment you notice.
If a calf dies before it has ever been tagged, you do not need to report its death to BCMS at all, because it was never registered on the Cattle Tracing System in the first place. You must still record the death in your own holding register. This is a narrow exception, it applies only to calves that genuinely died before tagging, not to any animal that already has a passport or a CPP35 notice of registration.
The 7-day deadline is consistent across the UK, though the system you report to depends on where the holding is, the same pattern as cattle movement reporting.
Whichever system applies to your holding, the underlying discipline is the same: the moment an animal is confirmed dead, three things start counting down together, and none of them wait for you to be ready.
FarmHQ starts the 7-day clock the moment a death is logged in the app, whether that is typed in from the kitchen table or said out loud standing in the field, and drafts the BCMS report and register entry against the actual date of death rather than the date you got round to it. Joe drafts, you confirm, nothing is ever filed without your tap.
See how FarmHQ worksSeven days from the date of death. Within that window you must report the death to BCMS, return the animal's passport, and update your holding register. All three are due on the same 7-day clock, not staggered.
Only if it was over 48 months old and did not die at a slaughterhouse for human consumption. You must contact an approved collector within 24 hours of death, and the carcass must reach an approved sampling site within 48 hours of that contact, roughly 72 hours from death in total.
BCMS can place movement restrictions on the rest of your herd until your records are put right, and in more serious or repeated cases keepers can be prosecuted. There is no grace period built into the rule itself.
No. If a calf dies before it has been tagged, you do not need to report the death to BCMS, but you must still record it in your own holding register.