All horses, ponies and donkeys in England, Wales and Scotland must be microchipped by law. This allows local authorities and the police to track the owners of abandoned, lost or stolen horses, so they can be reunited with their owners more easily.
If your horse passport was issued before microchipping became a legal requirement in Great Britain, you will need to update your Passport Issuing Organisation (PIO) with the microchip number, and they will upload the data to the Central Equine Database.
By using the Central Equine Database you can:
- Check your horse’s passport details using the National ChipChecker
- Quickly report if your horse is missing
- Check if a horse is legally for sale
In Scotland, you can also register your horse with ScotEquine. This Scottish database puts horses and ponies on the map and tracks their moves in Scotland only.
We would recommend that horse owners make sure their microchip is registered with their horse’s Passport Issuing Organisation. They can check this by searching the Chip Checker and can find out which Passport Issuing Organisation manages that horse’s passport. If the microchip number is not found, horse owners need to contact their horse’s Passport Issuing Organisation. All Defra compliant databases have an integration tool which allows them to search where a chip is registered and are required by law to operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.