Feeders and Drinkers for 20 Hens: The Philippine Allowance Is 65 mm a Bird, or 100 mm

The only graduated feeder allowance for a layer comes from a field office

How many feeders does a flock need, and how long is each one? The DA’s Cagayan Valley office answers in four steps, graduated by age:

• a. Day-old to 4 weeks: 2.5 to 5 cm./bird
• b. 4 weeks to 8 weeks: 5 to 6.5 cm./bird
• c. 9 weeks to near laying age: 7.5 to 9 cm./bird
• d. Layers: 10 cm./bird

That is page 3 of Tips on Poultry Raising, 32 pages of extension material from one regional field office,. PAES 403 gives a layer one figure and holds it across every age. PAES 402 does graduate, into two age rows, and AO 12 splits rearing from production. So the one thing missing everywhere else is a graduated allowance for a layer, which is what the field-office list supplies.

Read it carefully before applying row b to a batch of broilers. It runs day-old through to Layers as one age progression, while the floor-space list on the same page does split layers from broilers. Which species each row covers is therefore the reader’s inference, and the document has left it open.

Dating it takes a caveat too. The guide leaves its own publication date out; the PDF’s metadata carries a creation date in March 2004 and the file was posted by the regional office in 2018. The watering half of that same page belongs to the water page, which prints it in full.

PAES 403 gives a laying hen 65 mm and the field office gives her 100

PAES 403:2001 is Housing for Layer Production, written by AMTEC at UPLB, and its scope sentence names “space requirement, feeding and watering facilities”. Its § 8.5.1.1 is one line: “The recommended space requirement for feeder shall be 65 mm/bird.”

Set that beside row d above. Ten centimetres is 100 mm. The field-office guide asks 53.8% more feeder edge for the same laying hen than the engineering standard does. Both are Philippine, published by different arms of the same department, and each was written as if the other did not exist.

Which puts the imported figure in a better light than it has had here. Penn State Extension’s feeder row for birds 8 weeks and up is 3 to 4 in, or 76 to 102 mm, and that overlaps the Philippine span of 65 to 100 almost exactly, running a couple of millimetres past its top. So the number the coop pillar carries was good all along. The pillar’s table carries two Penn State rows, mind, and the broiler one at 5.1 cm sits a third below PAES 402’s 75 mm. What the pillar was missing is company: the Philippine documents sat one clause over, in standards this site already cites for roofs, walls and floors.

The newest of the standards does something more useful than print a figure: it says where to look. PNS/BAFS 312:2021, the cage-free code, carries seventeen subsections under its § 6, from Breeds through Traceability, and feeding equipment is the subject of none of them. What it carries instead is § 5 a), which reproduces a passage under the label “Animal Housing (Section 5.1.4):”, a pointer into another standard I have not opened. The passage reads: “Chickens should be provided with the sufficient floor space/size suitable for their age, body weight, and size to ensure comfort to the chickens. Chickens should be provided with appropriate space to feed and drink comfortably. The feeding and drinking equipment and facilities should conform with the standards/requirements for each species and should be constructed and conspicuously placed such that chickens are allowed to feed and drink freely, allowing them to behave normally and contamination with chicken feces and urine is prevented.” Then § 5 c) says an owner “may also refer” to the “existing Philippine Agricultural Engineering Standards (PAES)”. It names no number. PAES 403 § 8.5 is where the layer figure sits, and the reader has to get there on foot.

The meat bird is treated more generously by the same bureau in the same year. PAES 402:2001 gives a broiler above four weeks 75 mm of linear feeder against the layer’s 65, 15.4% more, and on the drinker side its Table 4 gives him 40 mm against the layer’s 20, which is 100% more. The gap on water is the wide one, and it is the water article’s to work through.

PAES 402 answers the same question twice, and its two answers are 36% apart

Section 8.4.1.1 of PAES 402 is a pointer: “The recommended feeder length for broilers is shown in Table 3.” Table 3 is headed Feeder length requirement and has two columns and two rows. Above 4 weeks old: linear 7.5 m per 100 birds, round 5 pieces per 100 birds. Four weeks and below: linear 4 m per 100 birds, round 4 pieces per 100 birds. Under it sit two footnotes, and they are the load-bearing part of the whole standard for a backyard keeper:

“ᵃ If both sides of a linear feeder is available to the birds, count each side when figuring available space.”

“ᵇ 305 mm diameter pan.”

Footnote b is the only pan diameter the PAES series prints anywhere. With it the two columns of the top row can be compared in one unit. Linear 7.5 m for a hundred birds is 75 mm a bird. Five 305 mm pans per 100 birds is one pan per 20 birds, and a 305 mm pan carries 958 mm of circumference, so it supplies 47.9 mm a bird. The round column delivers 63.9% of what the linear column delivers, for the same broiler on the same line of the same table.

The chick row behaves differently. Four metres per 100 birds is 40 mm a bird, four pans per 100 is one per 25, and 958 mm shared 25 ways is 38.3 mm. That is 95.8%, near enough to agreement. The divergence appears only after four weeks, when the linear column nearly doubles and the round column adds one piece.

Table 4, the waterer table on the same page, is where PAES 402 comes apart. Its column-group header still reads “Feeder”, copied from Table 3 and left unchanged. Its round column skips the superscript that Table 3’s round column carries, so the waterer pan is a piece count on its own. Read at Table 3’s 305 mm, one waterer per 100 birds gives 9.6 mm of drinking edge a bird against the same row’s linear answer of 40 mm. To match the linear column a single round waterer would have to be 1,273 mm across. So the round column of Table 4 means something other than a 305 mm pan, and its own text takes the question no further.

Line up only the rows describing one market-age broiler and the published allowance runs from 17.05 mm to 75 mm, a factor of 4.4. Every figure in that span is somebody’s stated minimum.

A pan is a circumference and a trough has two sides

This is where a length turns into a shopping list, and both standards stop one step short of it. PAES 403 § 8.5.1.3 mentions round feeders and describes only their slots: “Round feeders should be provided with adjustable slots to control feed flow.” Section 8.5 in full, § 8.2, Annex A, Annex B and Figure 4, captioned “Typical design of round feeder”, all describe a round feeder without sizing one; the diameter is stated in PAES 402 Table 3 footnote b and in the layer standard nowhere.

Sa bilog na labangan, ang gilid na naaabot ng manok ay ang paligid at hindi ang lapad. A 305 mm pan measures 305 mm across and 958 mm around, and 958 is the number that feeds birds. DA AO 12 s. 2002 Appendix 1 states a 35 cm pan in its rearing table, which comes to 1,099.6 mm around. Iyan ang pinakamadaling pagkakamali sa buong paksa: kapag lapad ang sinukat mo, kulang ang labangan mo ng halos tatlong beses. Tape measure lang ang kailangan, at isang beses mo lang naman gagawin sa buong buhay ng labangan.

The straight feeder runs the other way, and Table 3 footnote a is the clause that says so. A trough the birds can stand on both sides of counts twice. DA Regional Field Office II draws exactly that object on page 7 of the same leaflet, labelled “Trough 120cm long providing double-sided feeding”, with “Lips along sides reduce food wastage”, sides 12 cm high and a total height of 25 cm. One Philippine document supplies the object and another supplies the rule for counting its sides.

So that trough carries 2,400 mm of feeder edge. At PAES 403’s 65 mm a bird it serves 36.9 laying hens; at the field office’s own 10 cm a bird it serves 24. Same drawing, same guide, two Philippine figures, and half a flock between them. The lip in the drawing is also a clause: PAES 403 § 8.5.1.2 asks for “a guard or lip about 10 mm - 20 mm to prevent the feed from being scratched out or beaked out onto the floor”, and § 8.5.1.4 asks that the feeding system be raised as the flock grows “to maintain the feed level at the same height as the back of the chickens”. The materials page covers what building one out of scrap costs in labour and offcuts.

AO 12 does the same conversion a year later and lands four points away

DA Administrative Order No. 12 s. 2002 is the welfare code for chickens. The copy that opens is the Philippine Animal Welfare Society’s mirror; a first-party DA or BAI copy was searched for on 23 August 2026 and none was located. Its § 11.5 asks for “enough feeding space per bird” and adds that “breeder companies’ recommendations shall be followed”, then § 11.6 sends the reader to Appendices I and II for the numbers.

Appendix 1 covers female broiler breeders and Appendix II covers male broiler breeders, and those two are the whole set. A keeper of ordinary hens who follows § 11.6 lands on breeder-stock tables, and §§ 11.5 and 12.5 hand the rest of the question to the breeder company.

Taken for what they are, the two appendix tables do the same conversion PAES 402 did. Appendix 1’s production row puts a chain feeder at 15 cm a hen, which is 130.8% above PAES 403’s 65 mm for a layer, and most of that gap is the bird: a broiler breeder is heavier and eats to a restricted programme, so her row was never written for a bakuran flock.

An engineering standard from AMTEC in 2001 and an administrative order from the DA in 2002 both accept a round feeder at roughly 61 to 65% of their own linear allowance, and each document reaches that ratio without reference to the other. Both leave the reason out. So does every other clause that touches it: § 8.4 of PAES 402, § 8.5 of PAES 403, and §§ 11 and 12 of AO 12 with its appendices. Each states the ratio. None explains it.

The nearest thing to a mechanism sits in a breeder company’s own handbook, and it is a reading rather than a claim any of these documents makes. Aviagen page 62 says that “pan and tube feeders (if filled automatically) have the advantage of all being filled simultaneously, making feed available to the birds immediately”, while with chain feeders “feed distribution takes longer to accomplish, and feed is not immediately available to all the birds”. That condition matters here. Filled by hand, the pan is refilled when somebody notices it is empty. Appendix 1 prices exactly that quantity in a row of its own, Maximum feed distribution time: 4 minutes in rearing, 6 minutes in production. Reading the two together suggests the round allowance is smaller because every pan fills at once while a chain fills along its length. That connection is mine, drawn across two documents that never meet.

The number to use is the one that matches the geometry you are buying. Chain and trough figures — 65 mm, 100 mm, 75 mm, 150 mm — are lengths of edge, and both sides count if the birds can reach both. Pan figures are pieces, and each piece is worth its circumference. Mixing the two is how a flock ends up with a third of the feeder it was sized for.

Twenty hens, in objects rather than millimetres

Ngayon, sa aktwal na binibili. Dalawampung inahin sa bakuran, at ang tanong ay ilang piraso. Labangan at inuman ang inaabot sa iyo ng tindera, kaya bilang ang kailangan mong sagot. Ganito lumalabas ang dalawa kapag hinati mo na ang mga sukat.

On the feeder side the two Philippine figures give 1,300 mm at PAES 403 § 8.5.1.1’s 65 mm a bird and 2,000 mm at DA Regional Field Office II’s page 3 row d. Isang labangan na 120 cm ang haba at dalawa ang gilid ay may 2,400 mm, kaya kasya ang dalawampu sa alinman sa dalawa. Kung bilog naman ang labangan, hatiin mo ang 1,300 mm sa 958 mm at 1.36 ang lalabas. Dalawang pan iyan, dahil piraso ang binibili at hindi haba. DA AO 12 s. 2002 Appendix 1 reaches two by another route, at one pan per 12 birds, or 1.67 for twenty, on a broiler-breeder row describing a heavier bird than yours.

On the drinker side PAES 403 § 8.5.2.1’s 20 mm a bird comes to 400 mm for the flock. DA Regional Field Office II’s layer row gives 400 to 500 mm for the same twenty and puts six 2-gallon fountains on 100 birds, which is 1.2 here. Dalawa pa rin ang sagot. That two is also the floor DA AO 12 s. 2002 § 12.5 sets outright. Ang buong drinker side ay nasa water page: intake, nipple ratios, at kung gaano kadalas linisin.

PAES 403 § 8.5.2.3 states that “no bird shall have to go over 3 m to get water”, and on a bakuran floor that limit is slack. Twenty hens on the 3.40 m² litter floor the flooring page derives from § 6.1 Table 1 sit in a pen 1.84 m square, whose furthest corner is 1.30 m from a drinker in the middle. Work the same geometry up and the limit is reached at about 105.9 hens, while a single 305 mm drinker runs out of edge at 47.9 on § 8.5.2.1’s 20 mm a bird. The edge rule binds first by more than double. Where the three-metre clause does bite is in the house PAES 403 § 8.1.1 describes, “about 10 m - 12 m” wide, where one central line of waterers leaves a bird 6 m from the nearest one.

The coop-size calculator on this site sizes floor area and returns a feeder length from Penn State’s figure, so it will not agree with the Philippine numbers above. For the money side of the object count, the startup-cost page works out how a piece count steps as a flock grows, and the space page handles floor area.

What usually goes wrong

1. The mistake: Measuring a round pan across and calling that the feeder length.

   Do this instead: Use the circumference: π × the diameter. A 305 mm pan is 958 mm of reachable edge.

   PAES 402:2001 Table 3 footnote b prints the diameter. The circumference is arithmetic. The edge a bird can stand at runs around the rim, so a diameter read as a length undercounts a pan roughly threefold.

2. The mistake: Counting one side of a double-sided trough.

   Do this instead: Count both sides where the birds can reach both. A 120 cm trough is 2,400 mm of edge, which serves 36.9 hens at 65 mm a bird.

   PAES 402:2001 Table 3 footnote a: "If both sides of a linear feeder is available to the birds, count each side when figuring available space." DA Regional Field Office II draws its page 7 trough for double-sided feeding.

3. The mistake: Reading DA Regional Field Office II’s "4 weeks to 8 weeks" row as a broiler row.

   Do this instead: Treat it as an age row. Use PAES 402:2001 Table 3 where the bird is a broiler.

   That list on page 3 graduates by age alone and ends at Layers, while the floor-space list on the same page separates layers from broilers.

4. The mistake: Buying one drinker for a flock of 20 because the imported bell ratio puts 125 birds on one.

   Do this instead: Buy two. DA Regional Field Office II’s fountain rate gives 1.2 for twenty birds, which rounds up.

   A bell-drinker ratio written for a broiler house full of birds says little about a flock of twenty, where the piece count is dominated by rounding. DA AO 12 s. 2002 § 12.5 sets a floor of two drinking points per bird as well, and [the water page](/articles/water-for-chickens-philippines) works through the drinker side in full.

What to go and measure this afternoon

Go out to the kulungan with a tape. Measure the labangan you already own along its length in millimetres, and if the birds can stand on both sides of it, double that. If it is a round pan, measure across it and multiply by 3.14. Then divide by the number of birds that eat from it.

Compare the answer against two figures. Under 65 mm a bird and the trough is short by PAES 403 § 8.5.1.1, the engineering standard’s own number. Between 65 and 100 it clears PAES 403 and falls short of the DA field office. At 100 mm a bird or better, both Philippine documents are satisfied and the next thing worth buying is a second drinker.

Questions people actually ask

How many feeders and drinkers does a chicken need in the Philippines?

Four Philippine documents state a feeder allowance and they state it as a length per bird. PAES 403:2001 § 8.5.1.1 gives a layer 65 mm of feeder space a bird; DA Regional Field Office II gives a layer 10 cm a bird on page 3 of Tips on Poultry Raising; DA Administrative Order 12 s. 2002 § 11.5 gives a caged bird 10 cm of trough space; and PAES 402:2001 § 8.4.1.1 Table 3 gives a broiler above four weeks 7.5 m of linear feeder per 100 birds, which is 75 mm a bird. For drinkers PAES 403 § 8.5.2.1 gives a layer 20 mm a bird and AO 12 § 12.5 sets a floor of at least two drinking points per bird.

How long should a chicken feeder be for 20 hens? Show the answer

At PAES 403:2001 § 8.5.1.1 twenty laying hens are owed 1,300 mm of feeder edge. At DA Regional Field Office II page 3 row d, which gives a layer 10 cm a bird, the same flock is owed 2,000 mm. One 120 cm double-sided hanging feed trough, the object DA Regional Field Office II draws on page 7 of the same guide, supplies 2,400 mm of edge once both of its sides are counted, and PAES 402:2001 Table 3 footnote a is the clause that lets you count them: "If both sides of a linear feeder is available to the birds, count each side when figuring available space."

How many round feeder pans does a flock of 20 need? Show the answer

Two. At PAES 403:2001 § 8.5.1.1 the flock is owed 1,300 mm of edge, and a 305 mm pan supplies 958 mm of edge because the reachable edge is the circumference, which is π times the diameter the standard prints. That is 1.36 pans, and a fractional feeder is unbuyable, so the answer rounds up to two. DA Administrative Order 12 s. 2002 Appendix 1 arrives at the same place from a different direction: its pan row is one pan for 12 birds, which is 1.67 for a flock of 20 and also rounds to two. That appendix covers female broiler breeders, a heavier bird than a bakuran layer, so the agreement is worth less than it looks.

Why does a round feeder hold fewer birds than a straight one of the same length? Show the answer

Because the two are measured on different things. A linear feeder is measured along its length, and PAES 402:2001 Table 3 footnote a lets both of its sides count. A round pan is measured around its circumference, which for the 305 mm pan of footnote b is 958 mm. Read PAES 402:2001 Table 3 across its own row for a broiler above four weeks and the round column supplies 47.9 mm a bird against the linear column 75 mm, which is 63.9%. DA Administrative Order 12 s. 2002 Appendix 1 does the same conversion for a breeder hen in production and lands at 61.1%. Both documents publish the conversion.

How far should a chicken have to walk to reach water? Show the answer

PAES 403:2001 § 8.5.2.3 states that "waterers shall be spaced uniformly throughout the house; no bird shall have to go over 3 m to get water", and PAES 402:2001 § 8.4.2.3 says the same for broilers. On a bakuran floor that limit is slack: a 3.40 m² litter pen for 20 hens puts its furthest corner 1.30 m from the centre, and the three-metre limit is reached only at about 105.9 hens in a square pen at that area per bird. The allowance that binds first is the edge one, since a single 305 mm round drinker serves 47.9 hens at PAES 403 § 8.5.2.1 20 mm a bird. In hot weather DA Regional Field Office II page 16 halves the walk, asking that ideally no bird move more than 1 1/2 metres for feed and water.