Enter a calf's date of birth below. This works out the exact day its passport application needs to have reached BCMS, using the wording on GOV.UK: by the day the calf is 27 days old.
Enter a date of birth above to see the deadline.
A cattle passport application must be received by BCMS by the day the calf is 27 days old. So a calf born on the 1st is 27 days old on the 28th. Bison get 7 days instead of 27. Aim to send it well before the last day.
GOV.UK says you must register the birth by the day the calf is 27 days old (7 days for bison). So the birth date is day zero, and this calculator adds 27 days to the date you enter for cattle, or 7 days for bison. I would still treat that date as the absolute latest and aim to send the application earlier.
The date shown is when the application needs to have arrived and been accepted by BCMS, not the day you need to post it or click submit. If you're applying online through CTS Online, that distinction barely matters, submission and receipt happen at the same moment. If you're posting a form, treat the calculator's date as the absolute latest, not the day to put something in the postbox.
Set your own reminder two or three days before the date this tool shows, not on the day itself. That gives you a buffer for a form that needs a correction, a signal blackspot, or simply a day that got away from you.
If the date this calculator shows has already passed, BCMS will not issue a normal passport for that animal. Instead it gets a CPP35 notice of registration, which carries permanent restrictions: no entry to the food chain, ever, and no movement alive off the holding except under a specific licence to a BSE sampling site, a knacker's yard or hunt kennels. Full detail on what that actually means, and the narrow appeal route, is covered in the cattle without a passport guide.
This tool only does the date arithmetic. For everything else, who has to apply, how, what counts as an exceptional circumstance for a late application, and how this interacts with the move from BCMS to LIS, see the 27-day passport rule guide.
FarmHQ starts this same clock the moment a calving is logged, whether typed in or said out loud from the pen, and drafts the passport application against the real birth date so you never have to run this calculation by hand again.
See how FarmHQ worksIt takes the birth date you enter and adds 27 days, the date the calf is 27 days old, which is the deadline GOV.UK gives for registering the birth to get a passport. For bison it adds 7 days instead.
The day it needs to arrive and be received by BCMS. Posting or submitting on the deadline itself is cutting it close, especially by post, so treat the date shown as the latest safe day to have it already in.
BCMS will not issue a normal passport. The calf gets a CPP35 notice of registration instead, with permanent restrictions on selling it or moving it off the holding alive except to a BSE sampling site, a knacker's yard or hunt kennels.