The British Cattle Movement Service and the Cattle Tracing System that sits behind it are being replaced. The Livestock Information Service (LIS) goes live for cattle in summer 2026, covering England, Scotland, and Wales. If your farm management software does not integrate with LIS, you will be reporting movements manually through a government portal. This article covers what is changing, what your software needs to do, and what to ask your provider right now.
The core change is the system that sits behind your movement reports. The Cattle Tracing System (CTS), operated by BCMS, is being replaced by the Livestock Information Service. LIS is already live for sheep (since March 2022). Cattle is the next species to migrate.
For most farmers, the day-to-day process looks similar: you still report movements within the same timeframes. But the underlying technology is different, and the integration points have changed. Several practical improvements come with the transition:
The rollout has been phased to reduce risk:
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LIS has published API endpoints through its Developer Hub, giving software providers the technical interface to build direct integration. The question for every cattle farmer is whether the platform they use has actually built that integration, or whether it will be ready in time.
At minimum, your farm management software should be able to:
Livestock Information Ltd has not published a list of confirmed integration partners. The official position is that "farm software works with LIS, and your software provider will let you know if you need to do anything." In practice, this means the burden falls on you to ask your provider directly.
What we know as of May 2026:
| Platform | LIS Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Herdwatch | Confirmed LIS compatible | Already handles BCMS/CTS and ScotEID. Has confirmed LIS integration for the cattle rollout. |
| TELUS / Gatekeeper | Expected | TELUS has UK-based development. Migration to TELUS Crop Management is concurrent, which adds complexity. |
| AgriWebb | Expected | UK presence. Has not publicly confirmed LIS integration timeline. |
| Farmplan | Expected | Under TELUS ownership. Likely to follow the same integration path as Gatekeeper. |
| Breedr | Unknown | Livestock-focused platform. Check directly. |
| FarmWizard | Unknown | Northern Ireland-based. NI operates under APHIS, not LIS. UK mainland integration unclear. |
If your farm management software does not integrate with LIS by the go-live date, you will not lose the ability to report movements. Livestock Information Ltd has confirmed that a government-operated online portal will be available for direct reporting. The practical consequence is that you lose the efficiency gains of automated reporting: you would be entering movement data into your farm software and then separately entering it again into the LIS portal.
For farms with significant cattle numbers or frequent movements, this duplication is a serious time cost. For smaller holdings with fewer transactions, the manual portal may be adequate as a temporary measure while your software provider catches up.
From 2027, all newborn calves in England must receive bovine electronic identification tags using low-frequency RFID technology. This mirrors the system already in place for sheep. Existing cattle do not need to be retagged.
The software implication is that your system needs to handle both visual tag numbers (for existing cattle) and EID tag numbers (for new calves) simultaneously, potentially for years as the herd transitions. Systems that store only one tag number per animal, or that treat EID as an optional add-on field, will need updating.
EID readers funded through FETF grants can scan tags and transmit data to farm software. If your system cannot receive and process EID scans, the hardware investment does not deliver its full value. The reader captures the data. Your software needs to use it.
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The BCMS-to-LIS transition is the second major compliance infrastructure change UK cattle farmers have faced in recent years, following the SFI payment scheme replacing the Basic Payment Scheme. In both cases, farms using off-the-shelf software are dependent on their vendor updating the platform in time. If the vendor is slow, or distracted by other priorities (as TELUS is with its Gatekeeper-to-Crop-Management migration), the farm carries the risk.
A bespoke system built around your holding integrates directly with the LIS API on your timeline. When DEFRA changes the rules again, you update your own system rather than waiting for a vendor to prioritise your use case among thousands of customers. The LIS Developer Hub is open. The API documentation is public. The integration is technically straightforward for a system built to connect with it.