How Much Space per Chicken: What the Philippine Standard Allows

Ten birds per square metre is the figure every coop guide in this country quotes, and PNS/BAFS 262:2018 does print it. It prints a second limit in the same breath. § 6.3.1 states the density twice over: “Broilers (meat type): 10 birds/m² or 17 kg/m²”, whichever binds first (Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Standards, PNS/BAFS 262:2018). Ang kalahating iyon ng linya ang laging nawawala sa mga gabay dito sa atin. Carry a broiler to 3.0 kg and the 17 is what binds: 5.7 birds per square metre, which is division done on the standard rather than a number the standard prints.

PNS 262 is the standard for Free Range Chicken, and a closed backyard coop is not the housing it describes. No Philippine agency has published a stocking density for confined housing, which is why it sits in this site’s register as gap G-18. Kaya bawat hilera sa page na ito ay free-range indoor figure na pumapalit sa numerong wala pa.

Ten birds per square metre is a rule with an expiry date

Those two broiler limits land on the same answer at exactly 1.7 kg, which is 17 divided by 10. Under that weight the bird count binds and the familiar rule holds. Over it the mass limit takes over and the allowance falls away, row by row, on the coop size tool.

PNS § 6.3.1 publishes two numbers here, 10 and 17. Everything else in the table is arithmetic on the 17, and the standard being divided is the free-range one.

1.7 kg is also about the top of the liveweight Philippine broiler farms grow to, so the rule of thumb holds for the bird most keepers sell and quits for the bird they carry an extra fortnight. A broiler taken to 2.5 kg needs 47.1% more floor than the count of 10 gives it, which is division on the 17 rather than anything PNS prints. Hindi maliit ang pagkakaibang iyon kapag lumber na ang binibili mo. The grid stops at 3.0 kg because the calculator declines to answer above it. That ceiling is Aviagen’s. The Ross Broiler Management Handbook 2025 § 6 does not recommend growing birds to live weights above 3 kg in an open-sided house with no environmental control (Aviagen). The coop pillar works through what open-sided means here.

Read the fourth column rather than the second before you size anything. Fifty broilers are 5.0 m² of floor at 1.7 kg and 8.8 m² at 3.0 kg, and the head count did not change between those two rows. Only the broiler rows behave this way. The layer and native figures are flat, so only the broiler answer depends on a decision you have not made yet when the coop is being built.

The same clause carries a second housing row. For mobile housing of not less than 10 m² of floor, § 6.3.1 drops to “8 birds/m² or 13 kg/m²”, the same two-limit shape at lower numbers, and those two meet at a lighter bird than 1.7 kg. A movable coop is stocked lighter than a fixed one at every weight. The 10 m² threshold is part of the rule rather than a suggestion: below that floor area the mobile row does not apply and you are back on the fixed one.

Past 2.83 kg a square metre holds fewer broilers than native chickens

17 divided by 6 is 2.83 kg, and 6 birds/m² is the flat allowance § 6.3.1 gives native type chicken. Above that liveweight the broiler’s mass limit puts fewer birds on a square metre than the native line does, even though each of those broilers has slightly more floor to itself than a native bird gets. The native line does not move to meet it, because it is written in birds and the standard never comes back to it in kilos.

Now put a weight on the native bird. The only published Philippine native growth curve runs to day 120 and stops there. Its last row is a mean of 735.96 g with a standard deviation of ±151.01 g (PJVAS, Boholano native chicken, Ubay Stock Farm, Bohol). That spread is more than a fifth of the mean. One line, one stock farm, and the table ends on day 120, so nothing here reaches past that day. Darag, Camarines at Paraoakan may sit well above that mean or well below it, at wala pang naglalathala ng kurba para sabihin kung alin. What the curve does to native chicken economics is a separate argument on a separate page.

The 10 and the 6 are PNS’s own bird counts. The 5.7 and the 4.42 kg are this page’s arithmetic, on the 17 kg/m² and on the PJVAS day-120 mean of 735.96 g ± 151.01 g.

So the same square metre carries 3.85 times more live weight of broiler than of native chicken. That ratio is this page dividing the standard’s 17 kg/m² by the PJVAS mean, and nothing legal sits on the native side of it: PNS never states a kg/m² for native type. Nobody is cheating and no bird is being mistreated by it. It is what happens when one line of a standard is written in kilos and the line under it is written in birds, and the standard itself never sets the two side by side.

Gaano kalaki ang kulungan para sa 20 manok?

Indoor floor, fixed building, off the coop size tool. Division on PNS § 6.3.1’s own 10 birds/m² and 6 birds/m².

Start with the native column, kasi iyon ang gumugulat sa marami. Twenty native chickens draw 3.3 m² of indoor floor against 2.0 m² for the same count of broilers, and the bigger figure belongs to the smaller bird. Buwan ang tinitirhan nila sa kulungan na iyon, at ang haba ng panahon ang binabayaran ng dagdag na sahig. Layers draw the identical 6 birds/m² and no mass ceiling either, which is the standard declining to revisit them rather than a judgement about hens. Only the broiler column moves at all, and what moves it is the scale, not the head count. If the flock genuinely goes outside, the range rows are a different and much larger set of numbers, and the pillar has them.

Native keepers are the ones this standard leaves without a number

At 4.42 kg of bird on a square metre, a native flock stocked to the letter is carrying about a quarter of the mass the same floor is allowed to carry in broilers. That 4.42 is the standard’s 6 native birds multiplied by the day-120 mean of 735.96 g ± 151.01 g, and not a figure PNS prints. Kung native ang alaga mo, hindi ang density line ang unang susuko sa iyo. Ventilation, parasite load, the pecking order in a flock that lives together for four months and the pugad the inahin will actually use are all likelier to bind first.

What is the number for those? Nobody has published one. The standard covers density, nest holes and perch, and stops. Anybody who hands you a confident square-metre figure for confined native chickens in this country is quoting an American henhouse guide or their tito, and neither has a Philippine source behind it.

Hens are the exception, and it is worth knowing before you assume the gap is total. PNS/BAFS 312:2021, Code of Practice for Cage-free Egg Production § 6.2 requires “not less than… 0.14m2/bird for single-tiered housing; and 0.1m2/bird for multi-tiered housing”, and § 1 scopes it to “eggs produced by smallholder poultry farmers including native chicken farmers” in “a building, room, or enclosed area”. That is a Philippine indoor figure for confined hens, from the same bureau, and 0.14 m² a bird works out at 7.14 birds/m² — tighter than the 6 birds/m² PNS 262 allows a layer inside a free-range house, which is 0.167 m² each. Ang standard na para sa saradong bahay ang mas masikip sa dalawa. It covers eggs and layers only, so it does nothing for the broiler and native meat rows above, and G-18 stays open for those.

One more line in the standard is worth having before you plan a batch. § 6.5 sets the earliest free-range harvest at day 52 for broilers and day 90 for native chicken, so a native bird sold at two months cannot be described as free-range whatever the coop looks like. Starting a backyard flock walks through the rest of the first-batch decisions.

Anong wala sa standard?

Nest box dimensions, for one, though the absence is this standard’s alone. § 6.3.1 gives “not more than 5 birds per nest hole, and 31 cm aerial perch space per hen” and nothing at all about how big a hole should be, kaya walang sukat ng pugad sa coop size tool, which runs on 262. The layer code has it: PNS/BAFS 312:2021 § 6.5.2 asks for 35 cm in every direction per hen. So the 12 by 12 inch box everybody quotes, a US small-flock figure from Penn State Extension wearing a Philippine hat, is one a hen keeper can drop.

Shade is the other absence, in a way, though § 6.4.2 does print a number: 8 to 16 m² per 1,000 birds. It was written for commercial units and does not survive the trip down to a bakuran flock. The pillar and the native chicken guide both work out what it comes to at 20 birds.

Build for the heaviest bird you will carry

A kulungan gets built once and the harvest weight changes with every batch, so size it for the heaviest bird you might ever put in it rather than the one arriving on Monday. On the first table that means reading the 3.0 kg row and not the 1.7 kg one. Ang lumber ang dalawang beses mong babayaran kung mali ang unang sukat.

Those two rows are two floors. Drawn one inside the other they stop being a choice between decimals:

The wall encloses 3.5 m² for 20 broilers at 3.0 kg, and the tinted part of the floor is the 2.0 m² the same 20 birds need at 1.7 kg. The tint is a dimension across the sahig rather than a partition, which is why all 20 are drawn standing on the whole 3.5. Neither area is printed in PNS. Twenty broilers at 3.0 kg are 60 kg, 60 divided by the standard’s 17 kg/m² is 3.5, and the division belongs to this page.

Three more labels run down the right-hand side and two of them are imported. Feeder space at 5.1 cm per bird is Penn State Extension’s week 5 to 8 row, which is where a Philippine broiler sits on harvest day. One drinker nipple per 12 birds under 3 kg is Aviagen’s, and those last four words are load-bearing at a 3.0 kg bird: the same table drops to 9 birds per nipple at 3 kg and over, so the bird this floor is sized for stands exactly on the weight where the ratio changes. The third label is the pinto.

Native chicken changes what the decision is even about. The allowance is flat at 6 birds per square metre and never moves with weight, so the number is settled before you cut anything. What is not settled is how long the flock stands on that floor, and § 6.5’s day 90 is only the bottom of it. Sukatin mo para sa apat na buwan ng tuloy-tuloy na tira sa loob. Malayo iyon sa 35 araw ng isang broiler batch.

Both columns come off a free-range standard being used indoors, and that substitution rather than the arithmetic is the widest uncertainty on this page. BAFS publishing a density for confined housing would retire it on every row above and close G-18 with it. Nothing suggests that is in progress.

Questions people actually ask

How much space does one chicken need?

The only Philippine standard that states a stocking density for a meat bird is PNS/BAFS 262:2018, Free Range Chicken, and its broiler answer moves with the weight of the bird. The two broiler limits in § 6.3.1, a bird count and a mass ceiling, land on the same answer at 1.7 kg and cross the native chicken allowance at 2.83 kg. Below 2.83 kg a square metre of fixed indoor floor takes more broilers than the six native chickens or layers the same standard allows there, and above it fewer, even though each of those heavy broilers has more floor to itself than a native bird does. The standard covers free-range production, and for a meat bird no Philippine body publishes a density for an ordinary closed backyard coop. For hens one exists in a different standard: PNS/BAFS 312:2021 § 6.2 sets a cage-free space requirement of 0.14 square metres per bird in single-tier housing, which is 7.14 birds per square metre.

How many square metres do 20 chickens need? Show the answer

Under PNS/BAFS 262:2018, 2.0 square metres of indoor floor for 20 broilers up to 1.7 kg liveweight, and 3.3 square metres for 20 layers or 20 native chickens, which is roughly a 1.8 by 1.8 metre coop. Fifty birds take 5.0 and 8.3 square metres on the same two rules. Broilers grown past 1.7 kg need more than the first figure, because the standard also caps a fixed building at 17 kg of live bird per square metre and that limit starts to bind. PNS 262 is the free-range standard, and because no Philippine body publishes a density for a closed coop, these figures are a substitution for one that does not exist.

How much space does a 2.5 kg broiler need? Show the answer

Roughly 0.15 square metres a bird, or 2.9 square metres for 20 of them. PNS/BAFS 262:2018 caps a fixed building at 17 kg of live broiler per square metre as well as at 10 birds per square metre, and at 2.5 kg the mass limit allows 6.8 birds per square metre rather than 10. The familiar ten birds per square metre is only correct up to 1.7 kg, which is where the two limits in the standard meet. Those are free-range figures used for a closed coop, because no Philippine body publishes a density for confined housing.

How much space does a native chicken need? Show the answer

PNS/BAFS 262:2018 allows 6 native type chickens per square metre of indoor floor in a fixed building, the same flat figure it gives layers, with no weight limit attached to it. Native chickens are light birds: the only published Philippine native growth curve records a mean liveweight of 735.96 g on day 120, with a standard deviation of 151.01 g, for Boholano birds at Ubay Stock Farm in Bohol. The same standard bars a free-range claim on any native chicken harvested earlier than day 90.