Alpaca herd register: requirement, contents and form

Who has to keep a herd register

The legal basis is in § 45 paragraph 1 Viehverkehrsverordnung. It says that keepers of farmed game, camelids and other cloven-hoofed animals must notify their operation and keep a herd register (Bestandsregister). Alpacas and llamas are camelids, so they fall under this provision. § 42, which regulates the ear tag numbers of sheep and goats, does not apply to them, and neither do any of the special provisions for cattle or pigs.

There is no lower limit. The ordinance has no de minimis threshold for small herds and no exception for hobby keeping. Someone who keeps two animals keeps the same register as a farm with forty. Even geldings that are never bred and are used only for trekking belong in it. What matters is that animals are kept in a herd, not what for.

The purpose is disease control. If a notifiable animal disease breaks out somewhere, it must be possible to trace quickly which animal went where from which farm and when. This is exactly the chain the register reproduces. That is why the authority cares less about the animals’ names than about the dates, the origin and the whereabouts.

Notify the authority first, then make entries: the right order

The notification of animal keeping comes before the register. For this, § 45 refers to § 26: the keeping must be notified to the responsible Veterinäramt, which then assigns a holding number (VVVO no.). This number later appears in the header of the herd register and is needed for further notifications. Someone who files the notification only once the animals are already there has, strictly speaking, already committed a violation.

In practice that means: allow two to four weeks of lead time before the first animal moves. Depending on the federal state, the Tierseuchenkasse (animal disease fund) also has to be informed, and without a holding number nothing usually happens there. Which offices come in which order and what else is on the list can be found in the overview of all legal obligations for alpaca and llama keepers.

What goes in the register: the seven columns of the official form

The ordinance itself names only the minimum: the total number of animals on January 1 of each year, plus every arrival and departure with the date and the name and address of the previous owner or the acquirer. The Veterinärämter issue their own forms for this, which largely agree in content. The herd register for alpaca keepers of Landkreis Mittelsachsen is a typical example and is laid out in seven columns.

Above the table are the keeper’s name, address and holding number as well as the total count on the reporting date. At the bottom there is room for the date, stamp and signature of the check by the Veterinäramt. Your responsible office can tell you which form applies in your district; most provide it as a PDF to print.

Column 7 is easily overlooked but is the actual checkpoint. It forces you to update the count after every entry. In an inspection, exactly that is reconciled: does the number in the last row match the animals actually standing in the pasture? If not, an entry is missing somewhere.

The January 1 count

Besides the ongoing entries, § 45 expressly requires the total number of animals of the species in question present on January 1. This is not a formality but the annual fixed point against which all movements of the previous year can be measured. If alpacas and llamas are kept together, they have to be counted separately, because the ordinance goes by species.

The reporting date also has a practical side effect: it is the best time for a reconciliation. Count the animals once a year, compare with the last row in column 7 and settle discrepancies immediately, instead of looking for them three years later during an inspection. If you also report to the Tierseuchenkasse, you have the number at hand anyway.

Keep it for three years, not five

For retention, § 45 paragraph 1 refers to § 25. Under it, the register must be kept for three years, and the period does not start on the day of the entry but at the end of December 31 of the year in which the last entry was made. An entry from February 2026 must therefore be available until the end of 2029.

A period of five years circulates widely online. It comes from a different context: longer periods apply to the records on veterinary medicines, and because New World camelids are legally classified as food-producing animals, that affects alpaca keepers too. Both periods run side by side. If you are unsure, the longer one is the safe choice, because keeping records too long is not a violation.

More important than the period is the duty to present. The register must be available on request, and that means when it is asked for. A binder lying in the basement that first has to be hunted down will, in case of doubt, not meet this requirement.

Bestandsregister, Bestandsbuch, breeding register: three different things

The terms are regularly mixed up, even in guides. They have different legal bases, different contents and different periods. Of these, only the first two are required by law.

A well-kept breeding register does not replace a herd register. It contains other data, follows a different logic and is kept by a private organization. Conversely, the herd register says nothing about pedigree. If you need both, you keep both.

Five mistakes that stand out in an inspection

Most complaints do not arise from ill will but because the register is left lying around in between and reconstructed from memory later. In our experience, these points stand out first:

• Births are missing. A cria born in your own herd is an arrival and belongs in the register with its date, even if it never leaves the farm.
• Deaths are missing. Animals that have died are departures. Without an entry, the running count in column 7 is permanently wrong.
• Only the seller’s name. What is required is name and address or the holding number. “Bought from Müller farm” is not enough.
• No unambiguous identification. There is no nationwide identification requirement for New World camelids, but a microchip is recommended. Without a unique identifier, it is impossible to prove in a dispute which animal was meant.
• The reporting-date count is missing. It is expressly in the text of the ordinance and is still forgotten most often.

Paper or digital?

The Viehverkehrsverordnung does not prescribe paper. What matters is that the required information is complete, in a traceable order and immediately available on request. A spreadsheet on the computer or herd software meets that just as well as the printed official form, as long as the current status can be output at any time.

The advantage of digital record keeping lies less in convenience than in completeness. If you record a birth in the animal file anyway, you don’t have to copy it into a binder as well, and it is exactly this second step that falls through in everyday life. If you stick with paper, you should keep the register where the animals are and enter every movement on the same day.

What else is on the list at the start, from space requirements and herd size to feeding, can be found in the beginner’s guide to keeping alpacas.

Sources and context

The basis is the wording of the Viehverkehrsverordnung in §§ 25, 26 and 45 as well as official leaflets and forms of the Veterinärämter, here the herd register form for alpaca keepers of Landkreis Mittelsachsen. Form layout and procedural details can differ between federal states and individual districts. This article is not legal advice; in case of doubt, the Veterinäramt responsible for you decides.