Foal registration
You can register your foals at several Belgian Studbooks at BWP: Belgian Warmblood – BWP, Belgian Riding Pony (BRp), the Connemara Pony Belgium, the Dartmoor Pony Belgium and the Harness Horse Belgium.
Your horse will receive the official BWP passport after registration with BWP. This passport is much more than just an identity card. It is a certificate of registration in the official studbook and a quality label for horses and ponies. Horses with a BWP passport guarantee quality and are highly regarded in the equestrian world.
Here you can find all practical information on foal registration at BWP, BRp, Connemara, Harness Horse and Dartmoor.
How do you register your foal?
Roadmap
Registering your foal with BWP is very simple. Follow this roadmap and receive your horse’s BWP passport.
- Register your foal through the BWP quick foal registration.
- You will receive a confirmation e-mail.
- BWP registers the data of your foal and will allocate a unique life number.
- You will receive an e-mail with all relevant information and an invoice from the BWP.
For foals in Belgium:
- You will receive an e-mail from Horse ID with the details for the online payment.
- In case you not yet have an account, you will be asked to create an account.
- In case you opted for the procedure veterinarian, you will receive the identification file by e-mail from Horse ID after your payment is received by Horse ID. In case you opted for passport consultant, the passport consultant will receive all information for the description of her/the foal’s markings via the BWP description app after the payment is received by Horse ID.
- You set up a meeting with the veterinarian/passport consultant. When your passport consultant is not a veterinarian, you have to micro-chip your foal before the passport consultant visits you. Several passport consultants are also veterinarians and can micro-chip at site (Filip Huylebroek, Patrick Desmedt, Patrick Vanvuchelen, Peter Corty, Sofie Moerman, Ines Verborgh and Vicky Stevens).
For foals from abroad:
- The veterinarian/passport consultant will pay a visit, make a description of the markings, takes the necessary hair samples and will micro-chip the foal.
- The veterinarian sends the identification file to the BWP office OR the passport consultant sends the data to the BWP office.
- The data will be processed by the computer.
- The hair samples will be send to the lab.
- When all the necessary information is complete, the DNA is approved and the invoices paid, the passport will be send by BWP and Horse ID sends you the confirmation of the encoding.
When do you have to register your foal?
You have to register your foal in the year it is born, preferably as soon as possible after the foal’s birth, so the secretariat has all data available in case the foal will compete or will be auctioned.
Register your foal after birth via our quick foal registration, a very simple and fast tool. The registration process will start immediately.
Register your horse at later a stage, after the year of birth? That is possible in exceptional cases. In this case you have to send the original cover/birth certificate to the BWP secretariat.
Focus areas
Keep these focus areas in mind when you register your foal with BWP:
Registering the foal
The data you enter initially upon registration are the most important! Check if all data are correct. It is not possible to change the data afterwards. Data can only be changed by explicit request or court ruling.
- Is the name of the foal spelled correctly?
- Are the correct breeder and owner mentioned in the form?
- Are the names of the breeder and owner spelled correctly? Are the names consistently written in the same manner? The BWP secretariat will use the mentioned names without any interpretation. The secretariat will consider “Peeters Piet”, “Peeters P.” and “Peeters-Janssen” as three different persons, even if they have the same address and they actually are the same person. In this case the secretariat will issue three different numbers, and that should not happen. Please thoroughly check all data.
DNA research
All BWP-foals will undergo a parentage verification.
- Is the result of the DNA research negative? The breeder will be informed and we will ask for new hair samples. A second parentage verification will be executed. The passport of the foal will only be issued if the result of the DNA parentage verification is positive.
Click here for an instructional video on how to take a hair sample.
Suggestions names for foals
No inspiration to find a name for your foal?
Every year studbooks decide with what initial the name of new horses and ponies should be. The name of a BWP foal start with the initial ‘V’ in 2021. The name of a BRp foal starts with ‘C’ this year. Below you find a list with examples for inspiration.
Our rates
Discover all our rates for foal registration.
Conditions for foal registration per studbook
Every studbook has several conditions for foal registration.