What Not to Feed Chickens in a Philippine Backyard

The list you found was written for a different country

Type the question in English and you get avocado, chocolate, raw beans, onions and salt, in that order, on a page that also tells you to watch for frostbite. Two of those five do not survive contact with the manual they are supposedly drawn from, at least not for manok. Wala ring frost sa bakuran, kaya iyon pa lang ay hindi na para sa atin ang listahan.

Avocado first, because it is always first. The Merck Veterinary Manual does list chickens and turkeys among the species susceptible to avocado toxicosis, says the leaves are the most toxic part, and describes birds showing lethargy, dyspnea, anorexia, subcutaneous edema of the neck and pectoral regions, and death. Then it says something the listicles leave out: “Caged birds seem more susceptible to the effects of avocado, whereas chickens and turkeys seem more resistant.” There is no published dose for a chicken. Totoo pa rin na peligro ang abukado. Ang wala ay ang numero.

Onion is worse for the list. Merck’s Allium page carries real doses, and every one of them is a dog or a cat: 15 to 30 g/kg of raw onion in dogs, under a teaspoon of cooked onion in cats, with garlic three to five times more toxic than onion. Poultry appear nowhere on it. Kaya kapag may nagsabing bawal ang sibuyas sa manok, tanungin mo kung ilan, kasi walang nakasulat.

None of this means feed your birds sibuyas. It means the list you were handed is ranked by what an American keeper worries about in a kitchen, and not by what actually kills birds in a bakuran between June and December.

Amag is the item that belongs at the top, and the Philippine standard leaves it off

The single most dangerous thing a backyard keeper feeds is mouldy feed. That is not an opinion about the tropics; it is what the numbers say once you look for a Philippine one. And the search for a Philippine one is itself the story.

Start with the standard whose title promises it. PNS/BAFS 194:2022 is the general standard for contaminants and toxins in food and feed. Its aflatoxin table gives maize grain a maximum of 15 µg/kg, husked rice 20 µg/kg and polished rice 5 µg/kg. Under the maize row sits one line of notes.

Quoted

This Standard only includes ML of contaminants and natural toxins in feed in cases where the contaminant in feed can be transferred to food of animal origin and can be relevant for public health.

The maize note says it plainly: “The ML does not apply to maize destined to animal feed or wet milling.” Read together, the two say the standard is there for the person eating the chicken, not for the chicken. Walang linya para sa sakong nasa bakuran mo.

The feed-ingredient standard passes the question along rather than answering it. Section 6.5 of PNS/BAFS 163:2015 says mycotoxins “should comply with the tolerable levels set by international standardizing body or competent authority”, and attaches no figure. That is the same move the homemade-feed article found it making on inclusion rates: it specs the ingredient in detail, then routes the toxicology abroad.

One Philippine document does put a number on it. Section 11.2 of PNS/BAFS 382:2024 makes a batch defective when a sample unit carries “more than 50 ppb of Aflatoxin (B1) at the plant level”, and section 5.2.4 of the same standard says “Feed ingredients with molds shall not be used to prevent aflatoxin contamination”. That is a real rule with a real figure. It is also the code of practice for organic feeds, which is not the sack most keepers buy.

Fifty ppb is the same number Merck reaches from the other direction: dietary aflatoxin generally tolerated at “≤50 ppb in young poultry, ≤100 ppb in adult poultry”, with approximately twice those levels “likely to cause clinical disease, including some mortality.” Two independent documents landing on 50 is the closest thing to a settled figure this question has.

Darak is the cheapest sack in the store, and the one the Philippine survey found worst

Rice bran is the ingredient most likely to be in a bakuran and the ingredient with the worst measured record here. The review by Balendres, Karlovsky and Cumagun (2019) in Foods collects the Philippine survey work, and its Table 3 is not comfortable reading if darak is half your mix.

Ranges and sample counts from Table 3 of Balendres et al. (2019), which credits the rice figures to Sales and Yoshizawa (2005) and the corn figures to Arim and others (1999). The tolerance is Merck’s. Micrograms per kilo and ppb are the same unit.

Read the sample counts before the headline. Fourteen bran samples is not a national picture, and the bottom of that range, 6 µg/kg, is clean feed. What the range says is that darak here spans three orders of magnitude and that nobody is measuring the sako sa harap mo. Puwedeng malinis ang darak ng kapitbahay at hindi ang sa iyo, at walang paraan para malaman iyon sa presyo. Note also that the same paper puts the Philippine regulatory control at “the maximum of 20 µg kg−1” for products consumed as human food. Rice bran is not one of those, kaya walang tumitingin.

Now put the price beside it. Rice Bran D1 was ₱21.50 per kilo at BAI wholesale for the week of 13 July 2026 against yellow corn at ₱24.75, a gap of ₱3.25 per kilo (feed ingredient series). The cheapest carbohydrate available to a home mix is the one with the worst survey record and no aflatoxin testing at any point a keeper can see. Hindi ito dahilan para iwasan ang darak. It is the reason to buy it fresh, in the quantity you will actually finish, and to smell it.

Everything else about darak is already worked out elsewhere on this site and not repeated here: the D1 and D2 grades are two different products with two different specs, and unstabilised bran goes rancid at about 1% free fatty acid per hour. Nasa homemade-feed article po iyon.

Eight months of the year your storage corner is inside the mould window

The reason amag outranks avocado here is climate, and both halves of it are published. Merck gives the storage conditions that support Aspergillus flavus: consistent day and night temperatures above 21.1 °C, grain moisture above 15% and relative humidity above 75%.

Hold that against PAGASA’s 1991 to 2020 normals for Science Garden, Quezon City.

Eight of the twelve months sit above the line, and so does the annual mean. Buong tag-ulan at hanggang Disyembre, nasa loob ka ng bintana ng amag. The temperature condition is not even seasonal: the lowest monthly mean minimum on that same sheet is 21.4 °C in January, so the 21.1 °C floor is cleared every month of every year at that station. Isang tanging bagay lang ang hawak mo sa tatlo, at iyon ang moisture.

That is why the practical rule here is a storage rule rather than a food list. The purchase spec is checkable without a laboratory. Section 5.1.6 of PNS/BAFS 163:2015 specs corn at max 13.0% moisture, max 3.0% spoiled and damaged grains, max 2.0% broken grains and max 2.0% impurities, and describes it as having “a sweet odor free from mustiness” and being “free from infestation”. Amuyin at hawakan, iyon ang dalawang bagay na kaya mong gawin sa tindahan. A sack that smells musty at the counter is already outside the Philippine spec and no price makes that a bargain.

Salt is the one thing in a Filipino kitchen that is concentrated

Kaning lamig on its own is not the hazard. Ang sabaw ng ulam ang hazard, at ang tuyo, at ang natirang bagoong. Rice is dilute, adobo liquid is not.

Merck’s poisonings page sets the whole margin in one sentence: “The addition of 0.5% salt (NaCl) to the ration of chickens and turkeys is recommended; however, amounts > 2% are usually considered dangerous.” That is a factor of 4 between the level you want and the level you do not, measured across a whole day’s ration rather than one bowl. The same page adds that chick rations “have contained as much as 8% without injurious effect” while in poults 4% was harmful and 6 to 8% caused death, and that birds tolerate up to 0.25% salt in drinking water but “are susceptible to salt toxicosis when water intake is restricted.”

That last clause is the one that matters in a Philippine April. Maalat na tira at tuyong inuman ay ibang usapan sa maalat na tira at punong inuman buong araw. If leftovers go in at all, water goes in first and stays.

There is a Philippine cross-check worth having here, and it is a warning about how to read ingredient specs rather than a feeding rule. PNS/BAFS 163:2015 caps salt in local fish meal at max 5.0% and in imported fish meal at max 4.0%, alongside histamine at max 500 ppm and Salmonella negative at 25 grams. Five percent is 2.5 times the share Merck calls dangerous in a finished ration, and both figures are correct: an ingredient at 5% salt entering a ration at 5% of its weight contributes a quarter of one percent. Kaya ang cap sa sangkap ay hindi cap sa pagpapakain, at doon nagkakamali ang karamihan. Whatever tuyo trimmings carry, nobody has weighed them and nobody publishes a figure for them. I could not find a dated Philippine sodium figure for tuyo, daing or bagoong from FNRI or anywhere else I would cite, and that gap is real.

What dies in the kulungan is feed too, and that is how botulism starts

A dead rat under the slats is not something anybody decides to feed the flock, and it is on this list because the birds decide. Merck’s botulism page names the routes directly: decaying organic matter carrying toxin, carcasses that let the bacterium grow, and maggots that take up toxin from a carcass and are then eaten by a bird.

The clinical picture is specific enough to recognise. Leg weakness and paresis progressing to flaccid paralysis of the legs, wings, neck and nictitating membranes, which is where the old name limberneck comes from. Incubation runs from 2 hours to about 2 weeks depending on the dose absorbed. Merck’s prevention list is all housekeeping: prompt carcass disposal, fly and rodent control, litter replacement, and cleaning with products effective against spores.

Kaya ang paglilinis ng kulungan ay bahagi ng pagpapakain, hindi hiwalay dito. A keeper who has the rest of the biosecurity routine in place is already doing most of this, kasi pareho ang gawain. It is also the one entry on this page that is a named disease rather than a contaminant, which is why it sits with the rest of them as well as here. Pick up what dies the same day, and keep the langaw away from what you cannot pick up.

The two plant toxins this site has already worked through

Kamoteng kahoy and ipil-ipil belong on any Philippine version of this list, and both already have a full treatment in the homemade-feed article that is not going to be restated here in worse form.

Ang maikling bersyon, at nasa kabilang pahina ang buong pangangatwiran. Cassava carries cyanogenic glycosides and is a settled question if you buy the meal to the Philippine spec and an open one if you dry peelings on a sheet in the bakuran. Ipil-ipil carries mimosine, and the Philippine standard’s 2 ppm ceiling and the published leaf-meal content do not agree with each other by a factor of at least 5,100, which is a reason to ask a veterinarian rather than to guess a level.

Is any of this actually against the rules here

No Philippine issuance I could find restricts feeding household kitchen waste to backyard chickens. The two Department of Agriculture issuances on swill both frame the risk around pigs.

Memorandum Circular No. 13, series of 2019 prohibits the unloading of food wastes from ships, and its own recitals name African Swine Fever, Foot and Mouth Disease and “the PHP 260B pig industry” as the reason. A second issuance, Memorandum Order No. 22, series of 2018, carries the words as swine swill feed in the title under which the Supreme Court E-Library indexes it; I could not open the document itself, so that title is all I am claiming for it. Neither one names poultry anywhere.

So the honest position is that kitchen scraps for manok sit in a regulatory hole, the same shape as the aflatoxin hole above it: the state has written the rule where the money and the export risk are, at hindi kung saan nakatayo ang bakuran mo. That belongs with the rest of what nobody publishes here. An absent rule is not permission, and the reasons above are toxicological rather than legal.

What usually goes wrong

1. The mistake: Treating the American do-not-feed list as the Philippine one.

   Do this instead: Merck says chickens and turkeys seem more resistant to avocado than caged birds, and its Allium doses are for dogs and cats only. Neither carries a poultry figure.

   The list is ranked by what sits in a northern kitchen, and it has no entry at all for the 8 humid months that decide whether your darak is safe.

2. The mistake: Assuming a Philippine standard sets an aflatoxin limit for the feed you buy.

   Do this instead: PNS/BAFS 194:2022 covers feed only where the contaminant transfers to food of animal origin, and its 15 µg/kg maize level explicitly excludes maize destined for animal feed.

   The only Philippine figure that binds a ration is the 50 ppb in section 11.2 of PNS/BAFS 382:2024, which is the organic feeds code of practice.

3. The mistake: Reading an ingredient spec as a feeding limit.

   Do this instead: PNS/BAFS 163:2015 allows max 5.0% salt in local fish meal. Merck calls above 2% of the finished ration dangerous. Both are right at once.

   A cap on a sack is a purchase spec. What reaches the bird is that figure times the share of the ration it makes up, and confusing the two produces a plausible wrong answer.

4. The mistake: Buying darak by price and grade only.

   Do this instead: Smell it. The Philippine spec for corn is free from mustiness and free from infestation, max 13.0% moisture and max 3.0% spoiled and damaged grains, and a musty sack fails it at the counter.

   Philippine rice bran has been surveyed from 6 to 6,173 µg/kg of aflatoxin B1 across 14 samples, and no step between the mill and your bakuran tests it.

5. The mistake: Cooking or drying mouldy feed to make it usable.

   Do this instead: Section 5.2.4 of PNS/BAFS 382:2024 says feed ingredients with molds shall not be used, without qualification. Throw it out.

   The mould is the visible part. Aflatoxin is a stable small molecule that outlasts the fungus that made it, and heat that kills the one does not remove the other.

What to do with the sack you already have

Four decisions, and three of them happen before the feed reaches a bird.

Buy smaller and more often. Ang tipid sa laki ng sako ay nauubos ng amag sa ikalawang buwan, and eight months of the year the storage corner is on the wrong side of Merck’s humidity line. Smell the sack at the counter, because free from mustiness is the Philippine spec’s own phrase and checking it costs nothing. Keep it off the floor and closed, since moisture is the only one of the three mould conditions you control. And if leftovers go in, water goes in first and stays in all day.

The thing worth carrying away is not a list of forbidden foods. Nasa imbakan at nasa sako ang panganib dito, hindi sa pinggan, and what is actually in that sack is a separate question with a longer answer. The documents that would tell you where the line sits were written for the person who eats the manok rather than for the manok, at iyon ang dapat mong tandaan sa susunod na bili.

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. "What Not to Feed Chickens in a Philippine Backyard". Manoknomics. Published September 7, 2026. https://manoknomics.com/articles/what-not-to-feed-chickens-philippines

Select the text to copy it.

Questions people actually ask

What is the most dangerous thing to feed a chicken in the Philippines?

Mouldy feed, and specifically mouldy darak or mouldy corn. Merck puts the tolerated dietary aflatoxin level at 50 ppb in young poultry and 100 ppb in adults, and says roughly twice those levels is likely to cause clinical disease including some mortality. The Philippine survey record collected by Balendres and others in 2019 reports aflatoxin B1 in rice bran here ranging from 6 to 6,173 micrograms per kilo across 14 samples. That top figure is 123 times the young-poultry tolerance. Nothing on a standard American do-not-feed list carries a Philippine number anywhere near it, which is why amag belongs at the top of a list written for this country.

Can chickens eat avocado in the Philippines? Show the answer

The blanket ban you will read everywhere is stronger than what the Merck Veterinary Manual actually says. Merck lists chickens among the species susceptible to avocado toxicosis, notes that the leaves are the most toxic part, and describes lethargy, laboured breathing, swelling under the neck and breast, and death. But it also says caged birds seem more susceptible while chickens and turkeys seem more resistant. There is no published dose for a chicken. So the honest answer is that avocado is a real hazard with no number attached to it, and it is a long way down the list from the sack of darak that has been sitting open since May.

Is it legal to feed kitchen scraps to backyard chickens in the Philippines? Show the answer

I could find no Philippine issuance that restricts it. The two Department of Agriculture issuances on swill feeding both frame the risk around pigs rather than poultry. Memorandum Circular No. 13, series of 2019, prohibits the unloading of food wastes from ships, and its own reasoning names African Swine Fever, Foot and Mouth Disease and the PHP 260B pig industry. A second one, Memorandum Order No. 22, series of 2018, covers catering waste from airports and seaports and carries the words as swine swill feed in its indexed title, which is as far as I could verify it. Neither names chickens. That is a gap in the record rather than a licence, and the reasons not to feed leftovers here are toxicological rather than legal.

How much salt is too much for chickens? Show the answer

The Merck Veterinary Manual recommends adding 0.5% salt to the ration of chickens and turkeys and says amounts above 2% are usually considered dangerous, which is a factor of 4 between the two. It adds that chicks have taken rations of as much as 8% without injury while 4% was harmful in poults, and that birds tolerate up to 0.25% salt in drinking water but become susceptible when water intake is restricted. That last clause matters more than the percentages in a Philippine dry season. Salty leftovers and a dry drinker are a different situation from salty leftovers and full water all day.

Does the Philippines have an aflatoxin limit for chicken feed? Show the answer

Not one that covers the ordinary sack. PNS/BAFS 194:2022 is titled a general standard for contaminants and toxins in food and feed, and its scope clause says it only includes maximum levels in feed where the contaminant can transfer to food of animal origin and be relevant to public health. Its aflatoxin table sets 15 micrograms per kilo for maize grain and then notes that the level does not apply to maize destined for animal feed. The one Philippine figure that binds a poultry ration is section 11.2 of PNS/BAFS 382:2024, which makes a batch defective above 50 ppb of aflatoxin B1, and that standard covers organic feeds.