Otero County, NM Animal Ordinances: Microchipping (2026)

Section 105-7E, "Animal identification," places the microchip mandate on impounded strays: all dogs and cats impounded as strays are required to have microchips implanted within 60 days when reclaimed by their owner, adopted, or rescued from the Otero County Animal Shelter. The same subsection separately requires that all community cats eligible for the trap, neuter, vaccinate, return program be microchipped, tying the identification duty to the § 105-6 community-cat exemption framework rather than to ownership alone. For animals not caught up in impoundment, the code frames microchipping as encouraged rather than compulsory: identification through microchips and/or tags is encouraged as a means of returning lost or stray animals to their owners, alongside registering the animal's description and the owner's name, address and phone number with a veterinarian or a national registry.

Section 105-7A separately requires rabies vaccination and a serially numbered tag from the vaccinating veterinarian for every dog or cat over 12 weeks old, which functions as the baseline identification most owners carry even without a microchip. Under § 105-11C(1)(a), a stray wearing a license, collar, rabies tag, tattoo or microchip that the Community Service Officer can use to identify it must be held for at least three days while the shelter attempts daily to contact the owner, whereas an animal with none of those markers has no such traceable hold advantage. The Sheriff's Office, through Otero County Animal Control Services, administers intake and the 60-day microchip clock once a stray is reclaimed, adopted or rescued.