Work out which section of the breeding book an animal belongs in, and why. Covers the four eligibility tests, the grading-up ladder, and the points where the regulation hands the decision to your approved breeding programme rather than deciding it itself.
Set the book status of each ancestor. The verdict updates as you go.
For cattle, pigs, sheep and goats the route from a supplementary section into purebred status is fixed by the regulation, sex-asymmetric, and takes at least three generations of females — your programme may require more, and several do. Equines are different: Chapter III 1(b) permits both sexes to be upgraded, but hands every condition to the approved breeding programme.
Why this is easy to misread. Chapter III enters nobody anywhere by itself — its point 1 opens "The conditions referred to in Article 20(2) are as follows". Article 20(2) is the operative duty, and its object is "the progeny of the animals referred to in paragraph 1": the immediate offspring of an animal recorded in a supplementary section. The female described in Chapter III 1(a) has a mother recorded in one, so she is that immediate progeny, and she is the animal entered in the main section. It is tempting to read her as still supplementary with her daughter breaking through — but holding her in a supplementary section requires Article 20(1), which is open only to animals "not eligible for entry in the main section", and Article 20(2) says she is eligible. Her offspring is covered separately, by the second subparagraph, and needs to be.
The trap: for bovine, porcine, ovine and caprine animals only females can climb the ladder itself — the first subparagraph of Chapter III 1(a) says "the female animal", so a male cannot be upgraded out of supplementary ancestry however good he is. But the second subparagraph says "the first generation offspring", with no restriction as to sex, so a male whose dam was herself entered under Chapter III 1(a) does come through at Gen 3. Getting either half of that wrong is the kind of error that propagates down a lineage for decades — and Defra has been running a compliance sweep on exactly this class of mistake in GB equine studbooks since 2025.
Issued at the breeder's request under Art. 30(1), and mandatory under Art. 30(4) whenever an animal is traded for entry in another book. Model forms are prescribed by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/717, whose annexes were replaced by (EU) 2020/602.
| Field | Requirement | Commonly got wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Issuing body | Name of the breed society, with website reference where available | — |
| Book & class | Name of the breeding book, and the class within the main section where applicable | Class omitted where the main section is divided |
| Identification | Identification system and individual number under animal health law | — |
| Identity verification | Method and result, where required under Art. 22 | Result left blank; mandatory for AI sires |
| Pedigree | Six named ancestors — parents and both sets of grandparents — each with breeding-book number and section | Section omitted, which is the field that proves eligibility |
| Evaluation | Performance testing results, and up-to-date genetic evaluation including the date of that evaluation | Stale results; missing evaluation date |
| Defects | Genetic defects and genetic peculiarities relevant to the breeding programme | Omitted entirely |
| Pregnant females | Date of insemination or mating, and identity of the fertilising male | May sit in a separate document, often lost |
| Signature | Name, capacity and signature of the authorised person | Space for more than one issuing body since 2020/602 |
Equines work differently again: under Art. 32 and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/1940 this information lives inside the single lifetime identification document, split into Part I (origin, issued once) and Part II (trade, completed or updated on every transfer).