How to Take a Daily Animal Inventory

Do you know the actual number of cats on your adoption floor? What about the dogs in stray holding? How many kittens are in foster care right now?

Keeping an accurate inventory of the animals in your care helps inform where you stand on a daily basis. Taking daily animal inventory is an important aspect of daily population rounds. Even with shelter software to manage your animal data, it's still important to check your records against the actual animals in each enclosure, in foster care and at offsite adoption locations. This ensures each animal's location and photos are up to date. 

What You’ll Need

• Shelter software
• Inventory list
• Animals' photos

Staff Time & Resources

• Designate the appropriate staff members, such as your kennel manager and your feline manager, to do daily counts. To maximize efficiency, this task can be part of daily population rounds.
• Train staff and volunteers who work with the animals to update the computer records for a change in location or status of every animal. A delay between moving animals and updating their computer records is often the culprit in animal mix-ups and can hinder efficient care.

Instructions

How to Take a Daily Count

Consider working in pairs: One person counts and performs a visual check of the animal, and the other checks the animals against the computer report.

1. Run an inventory report from your shelter software.
2. With the inventory report in hand or on a tablet/portable computer, walk through every animal housing area in your facility.
   • Count every animal in each area, checking them against your inventory report as you go.
   • Count each animal in group housing.
   • Count individual puppies or kittens in a litter.
   • As you count, compare each animal to their picture and make a note of animals in need of care or a change in housing so that you can follow up after your walkthrough. Alert the appropriate staff of any symptoms of illness/injury or abnormal behavior
3. Immediately after the walkthrough, update your records to match the count, location, animal ID and description.
   • Each animal should have a unique animal ID and an updated photo; use a collar or tag to identify each animal.
   • Include both the animal ID and the kennel/cage assignment in the animal's computer record.
4. Immediately update the shelter software when the location of an animal changes, including moves to and from:
   • different cage or group housing
   • foster care (including staff fosters)
   • an offsite adoption location
   • an offsite event, such as an adoption event
   • a spay/neuter clinic or veterinary hospital
5. If you identified animals in need of medical or behavioral care or a housing change during your inventory, notify the appropriate staff.