[laurelrus]

I'm not sure where on the forum to ask this question, so I thought I'd try here first.
We moved here in March and are turning a 5 acre field into a smallholding, and have bought 2 pygmy goat kids and 3 Ouessant sheep, and we have 4 elderly chickens that came with us from our suburban garden.
The animals aren't going to be eaten, they're pets and lawnmowers at the moment, we're hoping to breed in the future, sticking with rare breeds (we're smitten with Ouessants already and only had them for two weeks).
We're planning to add some pigs before too long as well, who also will not be for eating but hopefully breeding.
So, we keep being asked what our business name is, for instance where we buy our fencing supplies, feed etc. for the invoices.
We haven't worked out how we can make money from our venture, hopefully something will emerge, but chose a name anyway.
My question is - do we need to register our name somewhere, as a farm name? And if so, how?
I just got a form from Animal Health which asks for our trading name, but as we're not trading I'm not sure. We definitely will need to be making some money at least to pay for the upkeep of the animals, but it's early days.
As we've come up with a name we like, I'd like to make sure it stays ours!
If anyone can advise, that would be excellent, thank you.

[Rosemary]

You need a CPH number (from Defra / Rural Payments Agency) - you must have this because you already have livestock. You'll get herd / flock numbers from Animal Health for your sheep / goat flock and your pig herd - you must notify them within 30 days of getting the stock.

Can't advise on the trademarking / copyrighting of a name.

Can I suggest that you need to get your head round eating / culling animals? Now you may already have done this, but if so it's not apparent from your post. If you have, I apologise. If you are going to breed any stock, you'll get males - at least 50% in most years. For the most part, these will be unsuitable for breeding. You may be able to sell a few castrated males as pets, but most will have to end up in someone's freezer.

Breeding females will become too old to breed from - these need to be culled or you'll end up with no space for females that ARE suitable for breeding. And if you want to support rare breeds, the best way to do that is to eat them, thus creating a demand for the breed.

[Oopsiboughtasheep]

Regarding your business name, this might be a useful read if you haven't seen it already.

http://startups.co.uk/choosing-a-business-name/

I have just sorted out my CPH and been allocated my Flock number, so if you have done that yet, just email me and I'll give you the contact number you need.

[suziequeue]

Sorry to rain on your parade but I think you will be VERY lucky or exceptionally talented to make any money off five acres.

If you do then do let all the rest of us how you do it  :-)