Chicken Vaccination Schedule Philippines: What the State Actually Publishes

That is Annex F of PNS/BAFS 370:2023, the DA-BAFS Organic Poultry Code of Practice, printed with the standard’s own column headings. Six entries at four ages, and it is the whole of it: the only vaccination schedule by age the Philippine state has ever published, which means almost nothing you will read on this question comes from it.

Read what it does not have before you use what it does. No dose column, no volume, no dilution, no titre. No backyard column. No Gumboro row, no coryza row, no fowl cholera row. Four of the six entries name layers and breeders only. And the page it sits on is headed (Informative): an example the standard offers, not a requirement it imposes.

Kung schedule para sa 20 manok sa bakuran ang hinahanap mo, iyan na po iyon, at hindi ito ang inaasahan mo. Walang dose. Walang hanay para sa backyard. The note printed directly under the table narrows it further: vaccination is allowed in organic management “under the supervision of a licensed veterinarian when an endemic disease is known or expected to be a problem in the region where the farm is located and where the disease cannot be controlled by other management techniques or when legally required”.

Six rows, and not one dose

The shape says as much as the contents. The broiler column appears on the two earliest entries and nowhere after, which is not an oversight: a broiler is slaughtered long before the 8 to 10 week line. Marek’s and fowl pox are marked for chicken only. The sixth column, “Person administered the vaccine”, is blank on all six rows in the extracted text. And the body of the standard reaches for the annex once, at § 4.13.2, where it names it “Vaccination program example”. Example is the standard’s own word for it, in two places.

The other Philippine document keepers get pointed at does not fill the gap. PNS/BAFS 184:2016 § 5.4.2 says there “should be a written chicken health program in place, including a vaccination and deworming program, if required”, supervised by a licensed veterinarian. A should-level clause in a voluntary code, no schedule and no dose attached; the pillar on Philippine chicken diseases works through what it does and does not oblige. Kaya kung dose ang hinahanap mo, wala po doon at wala rin dito.

Where did this table come from?

The annex has a title line, and the title line has a citation: “Example of a vaccination program for poultry (Cruz, n.d.)”. The standard’s own bibliography resolves it.

Cruz, E. (n.d.). Doable-replicable-sustainable program utilizing proven scientific methods and taking a holistic and integrative approach on farming customized for smallholder and medium scale Filipino poultry farmers [Powerpoint presentation]. Bayanihan poultry program.

An undated PowerPoint presentation. The bibliography’s “Cruz, E.” is almost certainly him: the committee page of the same standard names Cruz, Erwin Joseph, DVM as Chairperson, from the Philippine College of Poultry Practitioners, with Lumbo, Noel B., DVM, PhD of UPLB as Vice Chairperson. The standard never joins the two names itself, and on that reading the only vaccination schedule the Philippine state publishes is attributed to a slide deck by the chairperson of the committee that wrote the standard carrying it.

I want to be careful with that, kasi madaling gawing tsismis ang isang linya sa bibliography at hindi naman iyon ang punto. A named Philippine poultry veterinarian chairing a DA-BAFS technical committee is better provenance than any page competing for this query offers. What the “(n.d.)” costs is checkability: an undated deck cannot be dated, cannot be shown to have been revised, and cannot be read by the keeper who wants to know why the fowl pox line landed where it did.

The bibliography entry carries one thing the table does not. The deck is described as a programme “customized for smallholder and medium scale Filipino poultry farmers”, and the table it produced has a column for broilers, a column for layers and breeders, and none for a backyard flock. Isinulat para sa maliliit na magsasaka ang pinagmulan, pero wala pa rin doon ang bakuran.

Annex F against the Merck programme tables

The programme tables in the MSD Veterinary Manual are the reference a Philippine veterinarian is most likely to reach for, and they disagree with Annex F. Both are printed here, with the name of whoever says which.

Fowl pox is the sharpest of them. Three credible references, three answers, and only the MSD fowlpox page carries a second dose at all: vaccination “in the first few weeks after hatching” and “revaccination at 12 to 16 weeks old”, starting roughly two months before either table does.

Newcastle at day one is the one a keeper buying day-old pullets walks into, and MSD’s Newcastle page states both sides of it in consecutive sentences: chicks are vaccinated “as early as day 1 of life”, and delaying “until the second or third week avoids maternal antibody interference with an active immune response”. The variable is maternal antibody, and only the hatchery knows the parent flock. Hindi po ako beterinaryo, so I am not going to tell you which of the three to follow. Ask the hatchery what the parents carried, then take that answer to a vet.

Gumboro has the Philippine state on both sides of it. Annex F has no infectious bursal disease row, where the MSD IBD page puts live attenuated vaccine at 1 to 21 days. Meanwhile BAI’s manual, § G Section 3.4, says sentinel birds on a previously infected premises “shall be given the basic vaccination program for IBD, IB and ND”. The state requires IBD on a restocked farm and publishes a schedule that never mentions it, and that manual sets no ages, no routes and no doses for those three either.

One footnote, in near-identical wording, sits under both MSD tables and applies to Annex F just as well. The layer table’s reads: “This is an example of a vaccination program. Individual programs are highly variable and reflect local conditions, disease prevalence, severity of the challenge, and individual preferences.” The broiler table’s inserts “typical”. Every page that prints either of them as a calendar has added a claim its source does not make.

Marek’s is settled at the hatchery, not in the bakuran

Marek’s is the entry a backyard keeper has the least control over and the strongest recommendation for. MSD’s Marek’s page says vaccines “are administered at hatch or in ovo to embryos at the 18th day of incubation”. Tapos na ang desisyong iyon bago pa dumating ang sisiw sa bakuran mo, at hindi mo na maitatama sa bahay. Itanong mo sa hatchery bago ka bumili: binakunahan ba, at kailan. Kung hindi nila masagot, sagot pa rin iyon.

It is worth asking, because this is the one point where MSD’s backyard poultry page drops its hedging: “Marek’s disease is present in almost every flock, and vaccination of all chickens is strongly recommended.” The same page sets the limit in its own words: “vaccination does not prevent infection or shedding of the field virus”, so a vaccinated flock is protected rather than clean. If you are working out where to buy chicks at all, this belongs on the same list as the price.

The bird flu vaccine arrived 663 days after the rules for using it

Dates from USDA FAS GAIN RP2023-0068, the DA release of 27 August 2025, and GAIN RP2025-0039. Between the circular and the registration there are 663 days. For twenty-one months this country had rules for avian influenza vaccination and no vaccine anybody could legally buy. That is not a complaint, kasi mas mabuti nang nauna ang patakaran kaysa mahuli. It is why any page written before September 2025 describes a rule with nothing attached to it.

Volvac B.E.S.T. AI plus ND gives immunity against HPAI subtype H5N1 and stimulates the bird’s immune system against velogenic Newcastle disease, DA says. The release states three things about how it is given and stops there: the bird must be “at least 10 days old”, it is “administered by injection, either into the bird’s chest muscle or into subcutaneous fat”, and it “takes 10 to 14 days for full immunity to develop”.

It states no dose volume, no number of doses per bird and no booster interval, and I have not read the manufacturer’s insert, so none of the three appears on this page. If you meet a page that gives you a millilitre figure or an annual booster for this product, ask where it came from. Nothing published since the approval reports how many Philippine flocks have actually received it either.

Whether it is a live question in your area this week is a separate, dated matter. BAI redraws a weekly count of the areas still under restriction and the areas with an on-going case, and the nine-year outbreak record also has a season.

Is there a free LGU vaccination programme?

Not one I can find in any Philippine government document. I went looking, kasi halos bawat pahina sa paksang ito ay may linya tungkol sa libreng bakuna, and not one of them names an order, a circular or a programme behind it.

There is exactly one documented route by which the state hands a smallhold keeper free vaccines, and it is a bleak one. BAI’s manual, § G Section 3.3: “For smallhold farmers, the DA shall provide sentinel poultry/birds, feeds and vaccines. Age and type of the sentinel poultry/birds will be determined by the TWG.” Sentinel birds are what an infected premises is restocked with after the flock on it has been culled, at least 30 head per household, and the same section calls the restocking optional and the owner’s cost. Libre nga, pero pagkatapos lang mapatay ang buong kawan mo bubukas ang pintuang iyon.

The one place the state says “every year” here is about people rather than birds. The same manual, § 6.1.1, strongly recommends yearly influenza vaccination for poultry workers with regular direct contact, at the employer’s expense.

One correction, made once. The page ranking first for this query as of August 2026 grounds the duty to report poultry mortality in Republic Act 9482. RA 9482 is the Anti-Rabies Act of 2007 and contains nothing about poultry. The duty is real, the window is 24 hours, and it sits in BAI’s manual rather than in that act; the pillar sets out the route. That page also prints peso ranges with no source under them. No Philippine agency publishes a poultry vaccine price and this site holds none, an absence recorded in the gaps register rather than filled in.

Twenty birds against a 10,000-dose vial

There is a practical wall in front of the whole schedule above. Commercial vaccines “are sold only in large quantities in lots of 10,000-dose vials”, MSD says, against a small flock owner needing “(eg, < 100 doses)”. One vial is 500 flocks of 20 birds. Isang bote, limandaang bakuran.

The same reference that recommends Marek’s for every chicken is careful about the rest. For a small flock owner, MSD says, “vaccination is generally necessary only if the birds have had disease problems in the past or could potentially be exposed to other birds”. Where a specific disease is already a problem, the page sends the keeper to a vet rather than to a calendar.

Kaya para sa karamihan ng may 20 o 30 manok, hindi ang anim na hanay sa itaas ang sagot. Marek’s sa hatchery, tanong sa beterinaryo kung may nakaraang sakit ang bakuran mo, at ang natitira ay kulungan at gate. Whether you keep layers or broilers, that is where the ranking sits for a flock this size.

What your birds are for decides which schedule you are in

The list is reported by USDA FAS GAIN RP2023-0068 and independently by Philstar on 8 November 2023, with the same members on each side.

Read those two columns as one sentence and the geography falls out of it. Nothing in either list names a region, a province, or a distance from an outbreak. Both name what the birds are for.

Two smallhold keepers on the same street. Same barangay, same weekly BAI count. The one keeping native chickens or layers sits in the left column and can ask about a registered product that now exists. The one growing broilers sits in the right column, ineligible outright, and no amount of local risk moves them across. Iisang kalye, iisang panganib, magkaibang patakaran, at kung para saan ang manok ang nagtakda niyon.

This is not a rule about the edge of the industry. PSA counted smallhold farms at 43 percent of the national chicken inventory as of 1 July 2025, against 54 percent commercial and 3 percent semi-commercial, in the figures GAIN RP2025-0039 quotes. The circular splits close to half the country’s chickens by purpose.

So the first question here is not which vaccine, or at what age, or from whom. It is what your flock is for. A smallhold broiler keeper is outside the avian influenza column entirely, which puts them back to the two broiler rows in Annex F, a hatchery question about Marek’s, and the gate. A smallhold layer or native keeper is inside it, and the conversation with a veterinarian is a different conversation with a different product in it. Sagutin mo muna iyon bago ka pa magtanong tungkol sa bakuna.

Cite this page

Every figure here carries the source it came from and the date it was read. If you use one, this is the line that says where it came from.

A backyard poultry keeper. "Chicken Vaccination Schedule Philippines: What the State Actually Publishes". Manoknomics. Published August 22, 2026. https://manoknomics.com/articles/chicken-vaccination-schedule-philippines

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Questions people actually ask

What is the official chicken vaccination schedule in the Philippines?

There is one published schedule by age and it is Annex F of PNS/BAFS 370:2023, the DA-BAFS Organic Poultry Code of Practice. It carries six entries at four ages: Marek's (HVT) and a Newcastle plus Infectious Bronchitis vaccine on the day of hatch, ND plus IB again at 14 to 21 days, fowl pox and a third ND plus IB at 8 to 10 weeks, and an ND plus IB entry after 6 months. The annex is headed (Informative), meaning an example the standard offers rather than a rule it imposes, and its own title line attributes it to "(Cruz, n.d.)". It carries no dose column, no backyard column, and no row for Gumboro, infectious coryza or fowl cholera. The programme tables in the MSD Veterinary Manual disagree with it on fowl pox, on Newcastle for layers, and on whether Gumboro belongs in a schedule at all.

Is bird flu vaccination required for backyard chickens in the Philippines? Show the answer

No. DA Memorandum Circular No. 49, series of 2023, signed 3 November 2023, permits avian influenza vaccination and does not require it. USDA FAS GAIN report RP2023-0068 of 13 November 2023 records that under the guidelines "the use of the bird flu vaccines is not mandatory and left to the discretion of poultry raisers". Eligibility by bird type is set independently of location, and where vaccination is deployed is a separate gate in the same circular. Small-hold layer and native chicken are on the eligible list, and small-hold broiler and commercial broiler chicken are on the ineligible list, alongside quail, pigeon and exotic birds. The first vaccine legally available here, Volvac B.E.S.T. AI plus ND, was approved by the Philippine FDA for commercial use on 27 August 2025.

Does the DA give free chicken vaccines to backyard raisers? Show the answer

Not as a routine programme that appears in any Philippine government document I could open. The single documented route is post-outbreak restocking. BAI's Avian Influenza Protection Program Manual of Procedures 2025, § G Section 3.3, says that "[f]or smallhold farmers, the DA shall provide sentinel poultry/birds, feeds and vaccines", with the age and type set by the technical working group. Sentinel birds are restocked onto an infected premises after the flock there has been culled, at least 30 head per household, and § G Section 3 states that restocking itself is optional and shouldered by the farm owner. Pages promising routine free or subsidised LGU vaccination name no circular and no programme.

How much does it cost to vaccinate a backyard flock in the Philippines? Show the answer

No Philippine agency publishes a poultry vaccine price and this site holds none, so any peso range you meet on this query is uncited. The structural obstacle is bigger than the price anyway. The MSD Veterinary Manual notes that commercial vaccines "are sold only in large quantities in lots of 10,000-dose vials", which "presents a challenge for small flock owners who require only small amounts (eg, < 100 doses)". One 10,000-dose vial covers 500 flocks of 20 birds, which is why the published schedule is not buyable in backyard quantities.