Keeping pigs at home: UK registration, movement and walking rules

Before the first pig arrives: four registrations

UK pig keeping runs on a four-piece registration stack, and skipping any of them means you're operating illegally:

1. County Parish Holding (CPH) number. From the Rural Payments Agency (RPA). Free, and takes around 10 days. It identifies the land your pigs will live on, by parish.
2. APHA registration as a pig keeper. A phone call to your local APHA office once you've got a CPH.
3. Herd mark (a unique code (one or two letters, four digits) something like AB1234) issued by APHA. It goes on every pig you keep, by slap-mark or ear tag, before any movement.
4. Standstill awareness. Moving a pig onto your holding triggers a 20-day "standstill" that stops other pigs leaving (6 days for sheep and cattle). Plan around it.

All four are free, and all four need to be sorted before your first weaner arrives. A seller who'll sell to you without seeing your herd mark first is a red flag, not a shortcut.

Daily welfare requirements

The Code of Recommendations for Pigs, DEFRA's statutory guidance under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, sets the practical bar:

• Two pigs minimum. They're social animals, and one alone is a welfare failure
• Shelter from sun, rain and wind, with dry bedding
• Access to wallow water in summer, since pigs can't sweat
• Room to move, root and socialise
• No tethering

In real terms: two weaners growing on to porker weight (6 months, roughly 60–70kg) need somewhere around 50–100m² of paddock, or the ground turns to mud fast. Go below that and both welfare and the ground suffer.

The kitchen-scrap ban

This is the rule that catches new pig keepers out most. Feeding catering waste. Anything that's passed through a domestic or commercial kitchen that also handles meat. To pigs is illegal, under the Animal By-Products Regulations (England) 2013 and the equivalent rules elsewhere.

That rules out:

• Leftover plate food
• Vegetable peelings from a kitchen that handles meat
• Bread, pasta or rice from a domestic kitchen
• Fruit cores prepared in a kitchen

What's fine:

• Unprocessed garden veg picked straight from the patch
• Windfall apples gathered straight from the orchard
• Pig nuts from a UK feed merchant
• Whey from a domestic kitchen that's never handled meat (rare, but allowed)

The rule traces back to the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, which started with a pig fed untreated catering waste. Enforcement is rare, but the offence carries strict liability. Not knowing the rule is no defence.

Movement and the eAML2 system

Every pig movement (buying in, going to slaughter, selling on, even coming home from a show) has to be recorded on the electronic Animal Movement Licensing system (eAML2) by the sending keeper. It's free, it's online, and it needs doing within 3 days.

1. 1

   Before movement: confirm herd marks

   Both keepers' herd marks need to be on the pigs and on the eAML2 record.

2. 2

   Within 3 days: file the report

   Buyer files, seller confirms. Late reports trigger compliance warnings.

3. 3

   Mark the standstill date

   20 days of no outbound pig movement follows any inbound one.

4. 4

   Update the herd register

   Keep a paper or digital record showing every pig on the holding, every movement, every mark.

Walking pigs. The famous rule

The Movement of Animals (Restrictions) Order makes driving livestock along a highway subject to licence. For pigs specifically, that means a Pig Walking Licence from APHA before you can walk one on any public road, including a quiet country lane.

The licence is really only granted for:

• Traditional drovers' routes to slaughter
• Specific veterinary necessity
• Established commoners' rights

For everyday exercise:

• On your own private land. No licence needed
• On private tracks with the landowner's consent. No licence needed
• On bridleways, footpaths or public roads. Licence required

That's exactly why the "pet pig walked to the pub" story makes the news every couple of years. The licence position really is that tight.

Slaughter and butchery

You can slaughter your own pigs for your own household's consumption without a licence, provided you've got the skill yourself or bring in a licensed slaughterman to your premises. What you can't do is sell, give away or exchange home-slaughtered meat outside your own household.

Pigs headed for retail (a farmers' market, farm shop, restaurant) must go through a licensed abattoir and be butchered under Food Standards Agency oversight.

Pigs are wonderful, productive, character-filled animals. They're also the most heavily paperworked livestock you can keep. And among the most satisfying to get right.

What a realistic first year looks like

A smallholder's first pigs are usually two weaners, bought in April, grown on grass and pig nuts through summer, and sent for slaughter in October at 60–70kg. Total commitment: around 6 months. Total paperwork: CPH, herd mark and APHA registration (one-time), two eAML2 movements (in, and to slaughter), plus a herd register kept for 3 years.

It's genuinely manageable. And it's also genuinely required.