Every animal has an unbroken chain
The ear-tag number isn't a label – it's a key. Hanging off it is a chain of events that has to be unbroken: birth or import, every change of location, and finally departure to slaughter, sale or death. Miss one link, and the chain is broken – permanently, because there's no longer any way to prove where the animal was for the missing period.
That's why the decisive question for any event isn't “do I have to report this?”, but “does this change where the animal is, or whether it's alive?”. If the answer is yes, it's an event that has to be reported.
- Birth of a calf in your own herd
- Arrival from another farm, or import
- Departure to another farm, to slaughter, or for export
- Death or culling within the herd
- Replacement of a lost ear tag, so the number stays traceable
Why a sale is two notifications
When an animal is sold, the sending farm reports the departure and the receiving farm reports the arrival. Both notifications describe the same event but are created independently of each other – and that's exactly where the typical discrepancies come from: one side enters a different date than the other, or one side doesn't report at all because it assumes the other side already has.
The database can't resolve contradictions like that – it can only display them. Each farm remains responsible for its own notification. “The dealer handles that” is no excuse if your own side is missing.
In practice, it pays to record the departure right at loading, not in the evening – at that moment the ear-tag number, date and recipient are all still unambiguous; later, three animals sold easily turns into a question of memory.
The livestock register and the census report aren't the same thing
Alongside the event notifications, German law also requires a census report on a set date: a snapshot of how many animals of which category are on the farm on a given day. It isn't a substitute for the ongoing event notifications – it's a cross-check.
If the census figure and the number calculated from the event notifications diverge, that's a sign of a missing or duplicate event notification. That discrepancy is therefore not an annoyance but a useful warning sign – provided you look at it before the notice arrives.
Your own livestock register has to reflect stock continuously anyway. Keep it separately from the notifications, and you inevitably end up with two versions of the truth.
What rides on it for subsidies and inspections
The notifications aren't only animal-disease law. They're also the basis for subsidy payments and for traceability along the food chain. An animal whose whereabouts can't be proven for a given period can't count as eligible for aid for that period – and in a disease outbreak, exactly the information that would define a restricted zone is missing.
That's why a single forgotten notification rarely stays isolated: it tends to resurface later, somewhere you weren't expecting it.