Lifestyle farmers and pet owners

What you need to do

Register yourself, your location and your animals

Whether you have a whole herd of cattle or deer, or just 1 animal on your lifestyle block, you need to register:

• as a Person in Charge of Animals (PICA), and
• the location where your animals are kept.

All the cattle and deer at your property must have a NAIT ear tag and be registered in your NAIT account.

You also need to register for the TBfree programme which aims to eradicate bovine TB in New Zealand.

Keep your account up to date

After you've registered yourself, your location and your animals, you need to keep your NAIT account up to date by:

• recording any animal movements to or from your location within 48 hours of sending or receiving the animals
• ensuring your contact details are correct
• entering any new information about your animals — for example, recording cattle and deer that die or are home-killed on your lifestyle block.

If you sell your lifestyle block

If you move with your animals to another property and you're still their PICA, you need to:

• assign the NAIT location number of the new property to your animals, or
• register a new NAIT number for the new property and record a movement from the old NAIT number to the new one.

If you no longer have any cattle or deer, call us to find out how to deactivate your NAIT account.

Recording other animals or pets

If you register cattle or deer in NAIT, once a year you also need to declare other farm animals that can spread diseases such as Foot and Mouth. This includes pigs, goats, llamas, alpacas and sheep.

School pet days

If you send cattle or deer to a school pet day, it's a good idea to record a movement to the school and back to your property. Check with the school to find out if they have registered the event with NAIT.

Keeping dogs and other pets safe

If you're in a rural area your dogs or other pets may come into contact with poisons such as 1080 which is used to control the possum population. It's rare for this to happen, but usually fatal. There are things you can do to prevent your pets from ingesting 1080.