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. Every cattle farmer has the same question. Has my platform built that connection, and will it 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 short. "Farm software works with LIS, and your software provider will let you know if you need to do anything." In practice you must ask your provider yourself.
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. You then lose the time that automatic reporting saves. You enter the movement in your farm software. You then type 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.
Your system must therefore hold two kinds of tag number at once. Visual numbers for the cattle you have, and EID numbers for new calves. It may need both for years while the herd changes. 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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LIS replaces BCMS for every cattle keeper in England, Scotland and Wales. The change is identical for all of them. No farm competes on how it reports a movement.
Yet each farm now waits alone. Some wait for a vendor. Some will type movements into a portal by hand. Each one pays for the same piece of work, or pays in time.
There is a better shape for a change of this kind. One body writes the specification for LIS once, and applies it to every system in the group. The work happens one time, and each farm keeps its own system.
We build farm systems on engage.re, and this is how we handle a sector-wide change. A new field or record type is a dictionary entry, so a rule change needs no migration and no release cycle.
We explain that method in bespoke software for a whole sector. We explain why a connection alone does not make two systems agree in MCP and A2A move messages.
This is the second large change to compliance systems in recent years. The first was the SFI payment scheme, which replaced 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. DEFRA will change the rules again. You then update your own system. You do not wait while a vendor ranks your need against thousands of other 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.
Our live farm demo opens without a login, and it covers the movement reporting in this article. Sign in as owner and log the movement with LIS-ready BCMS, or as vet and see the health records. It is a working system, not a screenshot.