PCIC Poultry Insurance Starts at 5,000 Broilers. The Free Version Starts at an RSBSA Entry

Five thousand broilers is the smallest flock PCIC’s own table names

The first number a bakuran keeper needs here sits on page one of PCIC’s own brochure. It is a head count.

5,000. That is the smallest number of chicken broilers named anywhere in General Information on the Livestock Mortality Insurance Program, the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation’s own two-page summary of the scheme, and it sits in the commercial column. The pullet and layer line under it reads 1,000 minimum. The file is dated August 2015 and is read here from an Internet Archive snapshot, pcic.gov.ph having been unreachable since at least 22 August 2026.

Section I of the brochure opens with four types of cover, and the split between the first two settles the question:

1. Non-Commercial Mortality Insurance Cover for cattle, carabao, horse, swine, goat & sheep.
2. Commercial Mortality Ins. Cover for cattle, carabao, horse, swine, goat & sheep and poultry.
3. Special Cover for livestock dispersal.
4. Special Cover for game fowls and animals such as fighting cocks and race horses.

Poultry appears once in those four lines: the second. Section III sets the head counts behind them: in the commercial rows chicken broilers start at 5,000 and pullets and layers at 1,000, both against a minimum total sum insured of ₱110,000. A twenty-bird flock is the size the starting-out pillar and the flock-size article both work in, and the pullet floor is 50 times it, the broiler floor five times that again.

Section IV gives the insurable ages, from 1 day to 8 weeks for broilers and 1 day to 75 weeks for pullets and layers, so a backyard flock is inside them.

Aling mga hayop ang pumapasok sa backyard cover ng PCIC?

PCIC wrote the non-commercial tier for a smallholding and sizes it accordingly, capping the cover at less than ₱110,000 per farmer or ₱15,000 per head. Six animals fill it: cattle and carabao from two head, horse from two, goat and sheep from ten, swine breeders from two, swine fatteners from seven.

Both ACPC profiles print the same six. The one as of 31 December 2020 gives the non-commercial cover as “cattle, carabao, horse, swine, goat & sheep” and the commercial cover as those six “and poultry”; the December 2019 profile numbers its four cover types identically. The World Bank’s 2023 review reproduces the eligibility table as its Table 33.

Section III of PCIC’s brochure, file dated August 2015, confirmed at Table 33 of the World Bank’s 2023 report. Non-commercial rows share one ceiling, ₱110,000 per farmer or ₱15,000 per head; commercial rows share a ₱110,000 minimum.

The three rows at the top of that table are minima, not typical holdings: 2 carabao, 10 goats, 7 fattening pigs. Iyon ang laki ng bakuran na nasa isip ng nagsulat. Ang kulungan sa likod-bahay na may 20 manok ay ibang sukat, at sanay na tayo diyan. Ganoon din ang karamihan ng programa sa puhunan at gastos, kaya doon nagsisimula ang lahat: kung saan nakalagay ang manok sa hanay.

The chicken sits one column across. First threshold. Read the rows above it before moving on, though: a bakuran that also runs two breeding pigs or ten kambing is inside the non-commercial tier at those head counts, on the same registry entry the free cover asks for.

The free version is funded, and its one condition is a registry entry

There is a second door, it is free to the keeper, and most people I have talked to about this have never heard of it. The FY2026 General Appropriations Act, printed in the Official Gazette Vol. 122 No. 1 of 5 January 2026 at pages 587 to 588, appropriates ₱6,500,000,000 to PCIC, and Special Provision 1 says what it buys:

“The amount of Six Billion Five Hundred Million Pesos (P6,500,000,000) … shall be used for the full insurance premiums of subsistence farmers and fisherfolk to cover crops, livestock, fisheries, and non-crop agricultural assets. The PCIC shall ensure that the beneficiaries identified are registered under the RSBSA and are not insured for the same type of insurance, with priority given to those in localities declared as critical geo-hazard areas or no build zones …”

Livestock is inside those words. The provision sets one condition on the beneficiary and it is an RSBSA entry; the one priority is a geo-hazard area or a no build zone. The provision is enacted law.

The FY2025 text carries ₱4,500,000,000 and the same gate, so the appropriation rose 44.4%. FY2026 re-enacts the provision with the second paragraph dropped and the acronym left bare: FY2025 spelled the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture out in full, and conditioned release on a Special Budget Request and “including the list of subsistence farmers and fisherfolk duly endorsed by the DA”. Why that went is not something the two texts say. DA’s release of 26 January 2026 rounds the rise to “45 percent” and adds two figures the GAA does not carry: an estimated 2.93 million farmers and fisherfolk targeted in 2026 against 2.35 million the year before, a rise of 24.7%.

How much of it reaches poultry is not broken out in anything I could open. PCIC reports one fused line, “Livestock”, and Table 2 of the World Bank report puts 370,346 farmers behind it in 2020, poultry among them.

So the gate is the registry, and DA-CAR’s RSBSA FAQ is where it gets specified. Registration is voluntary, carries no fee and is a lifetime enrolment. Three conditions qualify a registrant: Filipino citizenship, being at least 18 at the time of registration, and being a farmer, farm laborer or worker, fisherfolk or agri-youth. What the entry unlocks is listed there too, and “crops and livestock insurance” comes second, right after agricultural loans.

Then it states the documentary requirements:

“Accomplished RSBSA enrollment form · Photocopy of any valid government identification card with ID number · Proof of ownership of land for farm owners, proof of tenancy for tenants, and proof of agreement for lessees.”

The FAQ then lists twelve ownership documents under a careful verb: they “are advised”. Certificate of Land Transfer, Emancipation Patent, three kinds of CLOA, three patents, three titles, and last on the list, Tax Declaration. Advised is softer than required. All twelve of the FAQ’s documents are about land; the national list is longer. Annex B of DA Memorandum Order 27 prints the same list with a thirteenth line, “Others, specify”, and then § 8.2.3: “In case of non-availability of any document prescribed above, the registrant may request for Barangay Certification as replacement to the documentary requirement.” Section 8.2.4 names who signs that certification where the barangay chairman cannot, and its item (c) is the “City/Municipal Veterinarian for livestock and poultry raisers”.

Ang gastos sa pagpapatala ay oras at papel. Kaya bago ka mag-isip ng premium, sa Municipal Agriculture Office muna ang unang lakad, at doon mo itanong kung ano ang tinatanggap nila sa isang bakuran. Mas mura ang tanong kaysa sa biyahe na paulit-ulit.

The same memorandum, which is also the registry’s data privacy manual, ties the registry to the money: the RSBSA “serves as a requirement and basis for implementing various programs such as providing production input and financial assistance, insurance services”, with priority to the registered “in accordance with the special provisions embodied in the General Appropriations Act (GAA)”. Three things to bring, then: the enrolment form, a photocopy of any government ID with a number on it, and something about the land, or the barangay certification that stands in for it.

The loan window asks for the same registry entry

The third instrument is credit, and its first requirement is that line of text. ACPC’s Agri-Negosyo Loan Program lists eligible borrowers in three groups and the first reads “Small Farmers & Fisherfolk (SFF) – Registered or enrolled under the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA)”. Its terms are 2% interest with a “service fee up to 3.5%”, up to ₱300,000 for an individual small farmer, payable on the project’s cash flow but “not to exceed 5 years”, through partner lending conduits such as cooperatives, cooperative banks and rural banks. ACPC’s page carries no revision date; those were the terms posted on 24 August 2026.

ANYO’s six eligible purposes begin with Production and end with Marketing. It lists purposes and not species, so a flock falls inside Production the way any other production does. For an individual borrower the requirement list runs to four items, ending on a Farm Plan & Budget, and the third is proof of registration or enrolment in the RSBSA.

A third thing hangs off that registration. When a flock is culled under an avian influenza order, the state’s indemnity is paid at one rate to a keeper on the registry and a much lower one to a keeper who is off it, and the disease pillar holds DA Administrative Order 37 series of 2020 and the 100% and 20% split it turns on. The order named later on this page is a different one, at a different rate. The permits article holds the separate ladder of barangay, sanitary and DA registrations.

Isipin mo na iisang papel lang ito na may tatlong pintong nakakabit. Tatlong programa sa dulo ng iisang pila.

Magkano ang bayad, at ano ang nasa excluded list?

Three documents carry a poultry rate. The newest statement of one by a Philippine agency is ACPC’s profile as of 31 December 2020; the newest complete schedule is PCIC’s brochure, file dated August 2015, whose section V warns under its own table that “The above premium rates are subject to change by the PCIC”. The bases differ: the brochure sets the poultry sum insured at “Prevailing market price or as agreed upon” and the ACPC profile at “70% prevailing market price or as agreed upon”, so a percentage becomes a peso figure only once you know which one it applies to.

The two percentages in the last row rest on the World Bank report alone. PCIC’s own section X names the charges as “premium tax, cost of documentary stamps, etc.” and the rates come from the 2023 report. Also: where this site’s figures come from.

The 2023 report is the only document here whose prose puts poultry in the backyard tier, describing “noncommercial mortality insurance for cattle, carabao, horse, swine, goat, and poultry”, and its Table 35, headed “Premium rates for noncommercial livestock insurance”, carries a chicken-broiler row at 0.76 to 1.29 percent and a chicken-layer row at 2.60 percent per annum.

Now take its own Table 36, the commercial one, which prices broilers in two components: 0.24% for typhoon, flood, lightning and fire, and 0.52% to 1.05% for diseases. Add them. 0.52 + 0.24 = 0.76, and 1.05 + 0.24 = 1.29. The layer row needs no addition, because both tables print 2.60. Table 35’s poultry rows are Table 36’s restated, and Table 33 puts poultry only in the commercial rows at 5,000 and 1,000, siding with PCIC against the report’s own sentence. Table 32 carries a noncommercial poultry row too. Three of the report’s surfaces put a chicken in the backyard tier, and the two that do not are the eligibility table and the rate table.

A fourth line covers the kulungan instead of the manok. ACPC’s profile as of 31 December 2020 lists “Poultry houses, pig pens, stables and other similar structures” among the objects insurable as non-crop agricultural assets, at a property-floater rate “not to exceed 1.0% of sum insured” on an initial cover, with “a minimum of P400.00 per policy” over at most one year. Four hundred pesos is one percent of ₱40,000, so under a ₱40,000 sum insured the floor is what gets paid and the published ceiling never comes into it. The words ACPC prints there set a rate, a floor and a term, and attach no head count to any of them. What it insures is the building, so it is the one paid PCIC product here a twenty-bird bakuran might be inside, if a regional office will write it. What the kulungan cost to build is another page’s subject.

Section VII of the brochure numbers ten excluded risks, item 10 carries the poultry ones, and the World Bank’s Table 37 carries the same three.

Bird flu, the government slaughter order and the administrative order that destroys the animals are all on that list, and the policy is quiet in precisely that event. What pays there is DA Administrative Order 04 series of 2025, and it pays only after the cull this policy excludes.

Newcastle sits the reverse way round. The article on that disease records that the state’s indemnity order pays nothing for it, while section VIII.6.b of the brochure lists “Newcasttle Disease (NCD)” among the epidemic diseases the extended cover can reach. Two conditions ride on that: birds “properly inoculated and vaccinated at proper times”, and, from item 3 of the same section, indemnity “at a maximum of sixty percent (60%) of the sum insured”, on that same August 2015 schedule.

Marami sa atin ang nagbabasa ng ganitong listahan pagkatapos nang mangyari ang pinsala. Mas mabuti pong bago, habang tahimik pa ang bakuran at libre pa ang magtanong. Sa PCIC regional office, ito po ang itanong: para saan po ba talaga itong binabayaran ko, at ano ang sagot ninyo kapag ganito ang nangyari sa amin.

The claim paperwork is specified in advance: notice of loss within ten calendar days, documents within thirty, and for poultry a list of five items whose item (c) is a “Farm Management Chart or Daily Mortality Chart”. That is the record the article on reading a mortality pattern is about. Claims are settled “not later than forty-five (45) calendar days from receipt of complete claim documents”, and section XV makes the decision final sixty days after payment.

Four ways this goes wrong before a peso changes hands

1. The mistake: Reading "free insurance" as "no paperwork".

   Do this instead: Read it as a registry entry, and behind that a document about land or a certification that replaces one.

   Special Provision 1 of the FY2026 GAA requires that beneficiaries "are registered under the RSBSA", and the RSBSA FAQ asks for proof of ownership of land, tenancy or lease. Section 8.2.3 of Annex B to DA Memorandum Order 27 allows a Barangay Certification in place of that proof. The premium is paid for; the enrolment is the reader's to obtain.

2. The mistake: Assuming a poultry policy would answer for bird flu.

   Do this instead: Check the exclusion list first, because avian influenza is on it by name.

   Item 10 of section VII of PCIC's brochure, file dated August 2015, names "Avian or Bird Flu, Mycoplasma spp. Infection, and Salmonella", and the World Bank's 2023 Table 37 reproduces all three. Item 3 separately excludes an emergency or government slaughter order.

3. The mistake: Treating the state's cull payment and a PCIC policy as one instrument.

   Do this instead: Keep them apart. One is indemnity under an administrative order, the other is a contract of insurance with a premium.

   They pay in different cases and only one of them is bought. DA Administrative Order 04 series of 2025 pays after a cull; the PCIC policy excludes that same cull. Both, though, look at one registration.

4. The mistake: Quoting a premium rate without the date of the document it came from.

   Do this instead: Carry the document with the number: August 2015 for the full schedule, 31 December 2020 for ACPC's profile, 2023 for the World Bank tables.

   The bases differ between them, 70% of market value in one and "prevailing market price or as agreed upon" in another, and section V of the brochure says outright that "The above premium rates are subject to change by the PCIC". A rate with no date attached cannot be checked by the reader against anything.

The last threshold is a counter at the municipal agriculture office

Three doors, and two of them open on the same stub of paper. The RSBSA FAQ closes its enrolment steps on it: “Enrollees will receive a stub with their temporary RSBSA control number and DA stamp, as proof of registration.” That stub is what Special Provision 1 is asking after when it requires that beneficiaries be registered, and it is what ANYO’s requirement list means by proof of enrolment.

Whether a keeper whose whole holding is a kulungan behind a rented house is handed one comes down to how one office reads its own rules. The FAQ asks for proof of ownership, tenancy or lease and then advises twelve land documents. DA Memorandum Order 27 defines the registrants as farmers, farm workers, fisherfolk and agri-youth, and puts no floor under the size of a holding. Between the two stands an enrolment officer with a form.

So the answer is local, given across a counter, though a reader does not walk up to that counter empty-handed. Ask for the Barangay Certification route under § 8.2.3, reprinted as Annex B of DA Memorandum Order 27; for a poultry keeper the officer who signs it where the barangay chairman cannot is the City or Municipal Veterinarian. The enrolment is free and the office is the Municipal or City Agriculture Office. What the record does not settle is whether a desk that has spent years processing rice and corn will read § 8.2.3 across to a kulungan with twenty birds in it. That is the question worth arriving with.

Questions people actually ask

Does PCIC insure backyard chickens?

PCIC insures chickens, and its own eligibility table places them in the commercial column. Section III of its General Information on the Livestock Mortality Insurance Program, whose file is dated August 2015, gives chicken broilers a minimum of 5,000 and chicken pullets or layers a minimum of 1,000, against a minimum total sum insured of ₱110,000. The non-commercial rows of that table run cattle and carabao from 2 head, horse from 2, goat and sheep from 10, swine breeders from 2 and swine fatteners from 7. The World Bank's 2023 review reproduces that eligibility table as its Table 33 and its non-commercial rows carry the same six animals.

How much is the premium for poultry? Show the answer

Every published rate carries the date of the document it comes from, and there are three documents. PCIC's own brochure, file dated August 2015, prices commercial chicken broilers at 1.75% and chicken or duck pullets and layers at 3.25% to 3.50% without typhoon and flood cover, or 3.50% to 4.00% with it, on a sum insured of "prevailing market price or as agreed upon". ACPC's profile as of 31 December 2020 prints that pullet and layer split on a different base, 70% of prevailing market price. The World Bank's 2023 Table 36 splits commercial broilers into 0.24% for typhoon, flood, lightning and fire and 0.52% to 1.05% for diseases. The report also states that livestock premiums carry a 2 percent tax plus a 12.5 percent stamp fee.

Is the free insurance real, and who qualifies? Show the answer

It is real and it is enacted. The FY2026 General Appropriations Act appropriates ₱6,500,000,000 to PCIC and its Special Provision 1 directs the money to "the full insurance premiums of subsistence farmers and fisherfolk to cover crops, livestock, fisheries, and non-crop agricultural assets". The provision sets a single condition on the beneficiary: registration under the RSBSA. Flock size appears nowhere in it. RSBSA registration is voluntary, carries no fee and is a lifetime enrolment, and its documentary requirement is proof of ownership of land for farm owners, proof of tenancy for tenants, or proof of agreement for lessees. Annex B of DA Memorandum Order No. 27, series of 2024 adds a thirteenth line to that list, "Others, specify", and its section 8.2.3 lets a registrant who holds none of the land documents request a Barangay Certification in their place.

Would a policy pay out for bird flu? Show the answer

Avian influenza is an expressly excluded disease. Item 10 of section VII of PCIC's brochure names "Poultry - Avian or Bird Flu, Mycoplasma spp. Infection, and Salmonella", and the World Bank's Table 37 reproduces all three. Item 3 of that section separately excludes "Emergency slaughter/Government Slaughter Order". The instrument that does pay after a cull is DA Administrative Order 04 series of 2025, which is a different mechanism and turns on that registration.

Can I borrow for a flock without a land title? Show the answer

ACPC's Agri-Negosyo Loan Program lists small farmers and fisherfolk registered or enrolled under the RSBSA first among its eligible borrowers, at 2% interest with a service fee of up to 3.5%, up to ₱300,000 for an individual small farmer, payable on the project's cash flow but not to exceed 5 years, through partner lending conduits such as cooperatives, cooperative banks and rural banks. ACPC's page carries no revision date; those were the terms posted on 24 August 2026. Its requirement list asks for proof of registration or enrolment in the RSBSA, and the question runs through that registration. The DA-CAR FAQ advises twelve ownership documents, all of them about land, and the last is a Tax Declaration. Annex B of DA Memorandum Order No. 27, series of 2024 adds a thirteenth line, "Others, specify", and its section 8.2.3 lets a registrant who holds none of them request a Barangay Certification in their place.