Records are the only part of breeding that cannot be done retrospectively — and almost everything you will want to know in five years depends on something written down by someone who did not yet know it would matter.
The most important first
- Retention periods are set by schemes and by law, not by preference: the Kennel Club’s Assured Breeders Standard required breeding records to be kept for at least ten years until the scheme closed on 31 December 2024, and the American Kennel Club’s inspection program expects hard-copy ownership and litter records.
- A litter record still useful in a decade needs the sire, the dam, the whelping date, every puppy including those that died, the cause where known, and where each puppy went.
- Identification belongs in the record as well as in the dog. Registries require a permanent identifier, and the EU’s dog and cat regulation, Regulation (EU) 2026/1818, requires a transponder fitted within three months of birth and before any sale, registered in a national database within two working days. These identification rules apply to breeders from 31 August 2030.
- Keeping buyers’ contact details is a data protection question as well as a practical one. Under the GDPR, personal data must be kept for the shortest time possible, for a purpose you can state, with a review or erasure date set in advance.
- Records are the raw material for the whole of breeding evaluation. Use the record templates if you are starting from nothing.
Records are evidence, not administration
There are two reasons to keep records, and only one is compliance. The first is that somebody may ask: a registry, an inspector, a buyer, an insurer, a court. The second, and far more valuable, is that you will ask. Every judgment about whether a combination worked, or whether a line is improving or drifting, is reconstructed from notes taken at the time by someone who could not yet tell which of them mattered.
That is why the discipline is specific rather than general. A kennel with good routines and no records accumulates impressions instead of data, and impressions favor the dogs that did well. Writing more is not the goal; capturing the same fields for every dog and every litter is, so two litters five years apart can be read against each other.
Dog by dog, litter by litter
The two basic record types are the individual dog record and the litter record. The Kennel Club’s Assured Breeders Standard, written for a scheme that closed at the end of 2024, still gives a workable inventory for the first: registration details, name, sex, date of birth, ownership, proof of parentage, permanent identification, health screening results, veterinary treatment and, in due course, date and cause of death. The AKC’s requirement is similar — an individual ownership record for each adult dog, with the on-dog identification method recorded.
The litter record carries the events: mating dates, the whelping, every puppy born including stillbirths and neonatal deaths, causes and abnormalities where known, weights, veterinary treatment, and where each puppy went. The AKC specifies sire, dam, whelping date and the names and addresses of all buyers as the minimum.
The puppies that did not survive are the entries most often omitted and the ones carrying most information: a kennel that records only the puppies it sold has no denominator, and without one neither neonatal mortality nor the frequency of a defect can be calculated. The observations that feed these records are covered in monitoring and documenting whelping and observing and documenting puppies.
Health, medication and measurements
Health records divide into three streams that are easier to keep apart than to disentangle later. Screening and test results belong to the dog and are permanent: hip and elbow scores, eye examinations, cardiac assessments, DNA results, with dates, the scheme and the examiner. Veterinary events belong to the episode — what happened, when, which clinic, what was found, what was done, the outcome.
The third stream is a medication log, the one most often missing: product, date, which dog, who gave it. Breeder standards expect medicines to be used within their expiry dates and in accordance with their authorization, which is hard to demonstrate without one. Measurements only pay off in aggregate — birth and daily weights through the first two weeks, recorded the same way every litter, turn into something comparable, which is the argument for a fixed template rather than a fresh notebook.
Buyers, contracts and personal data
Buyer records are the most useful and the most sensitive part of the file: useful because every follow-up and every piece of longevity data depends on reaching the home; sensitive because names, addresses and telephone numbers are personal data about people, not information about dogs.
Two obligations pull in different directions and both have to be met. Breeder schemes expect buyer contact details and a copy of every sales contract to be retained — ten years under the Kennel Club’s Assured Breeders Standard until that scheme closed in December 2024. Data protection law, where it applies, requires personal data to be kept no longer than necessary for a stated purpose, with time limits set for erasure or review, and people told what is held and why; the European Commission’s guidance treats an unexamined ten-year retention as potentially disproportionate where no purpose justifies it.
In practice that means being able to say in one sentence why you hold each buyer’s details and for how long, and saying it at the point of sale rather than afterwards; whether a given retention period is lawful for you is a question for your own jurisdiction.
Identification, registration and traceability
Permanent identification is where your records meet everyone else’s. Registries generally require a microchip or tattoo for any dog used for breeding or submitted for health screening, and the identifier belongs in your own record as well as theirs. Where a litter is registered, each document issued to a buyer should carry the puppy’s identification number, so that paperwork and animal cannot drift apart.
Statutory traceability is tightening, and the direction of travel is consistent even where the detail differs. Under the EU Animal Health Law, registration of establishments breeding dogs is compulsory, including where the animals never leave the country, and dogs moved between Member States must be individually identified and travel with an identification document. The EU has now adopted a regulation on the welfare and traceability of dogs and cats (Regulation (EU) 2026/1818, published in August 2026). It requires dogs born in a breeding establishment to be microchipped within three months of birth and before they are sold, and a veterinarian to register them in a national database within two working days. These identification rules apply to breeders from 31 August 2030. Other parts of the regulation start on other dates, so check with your national authority which parts apply to you and when.
The regulation applies only within the EU; other jurisdictions set their own rules, outlined in breeding laws and regulations. A kennel whose records already link dog, chip, registration and buyer will absorb such changes as form-filling rather than reconstruction.
Retention, format and being able to find things
A record that cannot be found is worth what a record never made is worth. Three habits do most of the work: one identifier per dog used consistently everywhere, one place per record type rather than one per year, and a dated name on each file saying what it is. Scanning veterinary and registry paperwork as it arrives, rather than in an annual push, removes the step that never happens.
Format requirements vary and are worth checking. Some schemes still specify hard copy — the AKC’s inspection program expects it — while others accept digital files, and the resilient answer is usually both: digital for retrieval and comparison, paper or a separate backup for documents that must exist physically, kept somewhere a house fire would not reach. Build the file so that somebody else can use it, too, since whoever needs a vaccination record or a microchip number in a hurry may be a stand-in or a veterinarian — which is why where the records live belongs in the emergency plan rather than only in your head.
Outside Europe the minimums are often shorter, which is a reason to set your own. In the United States the AKC expects paper ownership and litter records but sets no retention period. Texas requires licensed breeders to keep records for two years, and USDA-licensed dealers must keep theirs for at least one year after a dog leaves. Breeding and health records are worth keeping for the lifetime of your program, whatever the legal minimum.
In practice
A breeder with three bitches moves from a shelf of notebooks to one folder per dog and one per litter, each with the same six tabs. Transcribing eleven years of notes takes two evenings, and the transcription produces the first real finding: across four litters by two sires, every puppy needing veterinary attention in the first week came from the lowest third of birth weights. She had believed this about one litter; the records showed it in four. It changed what she now writes down at whelping, and it was not available from memory.
(Illustrative, composite scenario.)
Work on it
A few minutes here will teach you more than re-reading the article.
Ask yourself
- Could I produce the full record of a litter bred five years ago in under ten minutes?
- Do my litter records include the puppies that died, with dates and what was known of the cause?
- If a buyer rang today about a dog I bred in 2019, what could I actually tell them from the file?
Find out & check
- Find out what retention period applies to you, from your registry or breeder scheme, any licensing authority, and the data protection rules in your own country.
Do one thing
- Pick your most recent litter and complete its record fully, including every puppy and every veterinary event, as the template for every litter afterwards.
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Sources & further reading
- The Royal Kennel Club — Kennel Club announces registrations model update and closure of the Assured Breeders Scheme (July 2024). royalkennelclub.com
- American Kennel Club — Inspection FAQs: records, identification and emergency plans. akc.org
- European Parliament Legislative Observatory — Welfare of dogs and cats and their traceability, procedure file 2023/0447(COD). europarl.europa.eu
- EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2026/1818 on the welfare of dogs and cats and their traceability. eur-lex.europa.eu
- European Commission — Data protection: principles of the GDPR. commission.europa.eu
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation — Responsibilities of Licensed Breeders. tdlr.texas.gov
- eCFR (USA) — 9 CFR 2.80 Records, disposition. ecfr.gov
Where evidence is limited, recommendations rest on established practice and expert judgment, and may be updated as knowledge develops. The requirements quoted here belong to named schemes and jurisdictions and are used as worked examples: retention periods, licensing thresholds, identification rules and data protection obligations differ between countries, and the EU dog and cat regulation adopted in 2026 applies in stages, with its identification rules applying to breeders from 31 August 2030. Nothing here is legal advice; what you must keep, in what form and for how long is a question for your own registry, your licensing authority and, where personal data is involved, a qualified adviser in your own jurisdiction.
Next steps
- Read next: Kennel record templates.
- Related: Vet check, microchip and registration · Taxes and records for hobby breeders: income, expenses and what to keep.
- Return to the area hub: Running a kennel: operations, records and resilience.