EU ID to CDCB ID
Turn EU bovine ear-tag numbers into the 17-character animal ID that CDCB uses — one animal, or a whole column pasted out of a herd export.
Convert a whole list
Paste a column straight out of Excel, one ID per line. To set the breed per animal, add it in a second column separated by a tab, comma or semicolon — FI000013193604-3, AY. Header rows and blank lines are skipped.
| Input | CDCB ID (17) | Status | Registered name | Sex | Born |
|---|
How the 17-character ID is built
Three fields glued together with no separators, always exactly 17 characters.
The three fields
| Position | Field | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Breed code | HO |
| 3–5 | Country or registry | FIN |
| 6–17 | Animal number, left-padded with zeros to 12 | 000026621362 |
So FI000026621362-8 on a Finnish Holstein becomes HOFIN000026621362. The EU check digit after the hyphen is not part of the CDCB ID and is dropped — this tool still recalculates it and warns you when it disagrees, because a mistyped digit usually means the whole number is wrong.
The animal number field can contain letters. Cows that reach CDCB only through a genomic submission, with no national registration behind them, get a CDCB-assigned number such as HOUSADAM104972906.
Other lengths you will meet
All of these describe the same animal, and the converter accepts any of them as input.
| Form | Shape | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 17-character | breed + country + 12 | HOCAN000012857690 |
| 18-character | sex code after the country | HOCANM000012857690 |
| Interbull 19 | 3-letter breed + country + sex + 12 | HOLCANM000012857690 |
| Lab export short form | as 18, leading zeros stripped | HOCANM12857690 |
United States numbers are ambiguous by length. Ten digits is an 840 animal-identification number, so US3228764393 becomes HO840003228764393, while shorter herdbook numbers such as US69169764 become HOUSA000069169764. Both readings are offered when the length leaves it open.
Country codes
- AT AUT
- BE BEL
- BG BGR
- CH CHE
- CY CYP
- CZ CZE
- DE DEU
- DK DNK
- EE EST
- ES ESP
- FI FIN
- FR FRA
- GB GBR
- GR GRC
- HR HRV
- HU HUN
- IE IRL
- IS ISL
- IT ITA
- LT LTU
- LU LUX
- LV LVA
- MT MLT
- NL NLD
- NO NOR
- PL POL
- PT PRT
- RO ROU
- SE SWE
- SI SVN
- SK SVK
- TR TUR
- CA CAN
- US USA / 840
Two things that will bite you
A clean conversion is not a record
The format transform always succeeds. Every well-formed input produces a well-formed 17-character ID. Whether CDCB actually holds that animal is a separate question, and the converter cannot answer it on its own.
CDCB holds an animal only once someone has submitted it — through a genomic evaluation, a herdbook exchange or an Interbull run. A national ear tag that has never been sent there converts perfectly and matches nothing.
Switch on the CDCB check to tell a well-formed ID from a real record. Your hit rate will track how much of the herd has actually been genotyped or exchanged, so expect it to differ from farm to farm.
AI bulls sit under their country of origin
Females usually resolve under their national number, because that is the number they were submitted with. Imported bulls often do not.
A bull bred in North America and licensed for use in Europe is issued a local number by the national AI organisation, but CDCB still knows it by its home ID — a Finnish number on the semen straw and paperwork, an 840 or CAN number in CDCB. Converting the local number gives a perfectly well-formed ID that finds nothing.
The rule of thumb: convert an ID only when it was issued in the animal's own country of registration. For imported bulls, match on registered name or NAAB code instead.
Conversion runs entirely in this page. The CDCB check is optional and, when switched on, calls the public read-only lookup at webconnect.uscdcb.com directly from your browser — nothing is uploaded anywhere else.