Litter Microchipping Checklist for Breeders

The week before

Pick one way of telling the litter apart and stick with it: coloured collars, ribbons, or temporary names written on a sheet. Whatever you choose, it needs to stay the same from now until each animal leaves.

Make a sheet with one row per animal: its identifier, sex, colour and markings, and a blank space for the chip number. Check your own details are spelled the way you want them on the database, because for puppies you will be the first registered keeper.

When you book, give the litter size and the date the first one is due to leave. That decides how soon the visit needs to happen.

On the day

Clear a table or worktop with good light, and keep the litter somewhere you can bring them out one at a time and put them back somewhere else, so done and not-done never mix.

Work through the sheet in order. As each chip goes in, write its number against that animal straight away. Don't plan to fill the sheet in at the end. Chip numbers are 15 digits long, so read each one back in groups of three before moving on.

If you have a second pair of hands, one person handles the animals and the other keeps the sheet. If you need to stop partway, pick up again from the last row you checked, not from memory.

At handover

Each buyer should leave with their animal's chip number, the name of the database it is registered on, and a reminder to transfer the record into their name. Keep your own copy of the sheet showing which buyer took which animal.

Where litter records usually go wrong

Collars swapped or lost between the visit and collection day. Puppies moved between pens mid-session. A digit copied wrongly from the scanner. A buyer who never transfers the record, so the breeder's phone still rings a year later. Every one of these is avoided by the sheet and the read-back.