Ramps to popholes... what are the requirements?

Published on : 19 Jun 2025

Accompanying the June edition of Ranger was a booklet detailing case studies involving the application of the new RSPCA Assured standards, specifically aimed at helping producers understand the requirements for natural daylight. The booklet followed BFREPA’s consultation with RSPCA and RSPCA Assured and was produced in response to the considerable debate among members and stakeholders regarding the daylight standards.

But there is more to the revised welfare requirements than natural daylight alone and, in this article, we explore one potential pitfall another of the guidelines may pose for keepers of free range or organic hens.

The 2025 RSCPA Assured guidelines require ramps or platforms to be provided, inside and out, where the pophole height is greater than 40cm above the solid house floor (and specifically the solid floor, not the top of the litter) or the soil level outside. As common practice has been to build a two-block 50cm dwarf wall on which to mount top-hinged popholes, many farms will need to install ramps. The ramps themselves could create management complications, from trip hazards to floor egg magnets as well as harbourage or access for pest, disease and rodents. Significantly, they will eat into the qualifying floor space.

“Useable Area” definition
DEFRA define the “useable area” in a laying house as “the space available for hens to move around and perform natural behaviours, excluding nesting areas. This area must be at least 30cm wide, with a floor slope not exceeding 14% and a minimum headroom of 45cm.”

Let’s deal with the 14% pitch first. This maximum gradient for an acceptable floor equates to a rise of 14 units for every 100 units in length. You could convert this to an angle, if it helps you visualise it: around 8 degrees. Return to the maths classroom of your youth and imagine the right-angled triangle; apply a little Pythagoras’ Theorem and with our known angle and opposite height of 50cm, you can quickly work out that the length of the ramp would need to be in excess of 3.5m in horizontal length. Impractical. So, we can assume that any ramps up to the pophole will be steeper than the 14% pitch required by law, and therefore will not qualify as useable floor space, thereby reducing stocking capacity. But by how much?

Table showing potential stocking densities for multi-tier and flat deck if using internal ramps

Ramps and platforms, not perch rails
Firstly, how wide must we build the ramps? The rules appear to conflict. In the RSPCA Assured standards, clause R 3.5 states that “ramps and/or platforms must be provided along the full length of the pophole”, whereas clause R 3.6 seems to indicate that 30cm width is adequate, stating “where platforms are to be included within the calculated usable area, they must be at least 30cm wide”. Will Lea, Compliance Manager at Country Fresh Pullets approached RSPCA Assured for clarification to be told that ramps or platforms do indeed “need to be the full width of each pophole, but not necessarily the full width of the shed, i.e. each pophole could have its own individual pophole-wide ramp/platform”.

Furthermore, because birds pausing on a perch rail in front of the pophole would pose an obstacle to other hens wanting to move through the opening, such a solution would not be compliant. Ramps and platforms only, then.

Let us say that the ramps protrude 1m into the house from the wall (giving rise to a 50% slope or a 26.6-degree angle, for the mathematicians). For a typical 16,000-bird house, the minimum amount of pophole space equates to 54 metres. Calculating the floor area, 54m x 1m equals 54 square metres of lost space which, at 9 birds per square metre, means 486 birds of reduced capacity, or 3%.

Opportunity cost
Consider that at least one third of the floor space in the laying house must be covered with litter, however, and the capacity loss may not be limited to 3%. If the laying house is currently arranged with only the minimum one third of floor space as litter, the lost capacity on the floor would be reflected in the equipped two-thirds of the house. So, in total, a flat-deck 16,000-bird house may yet lose 1,458 bird spaces, or more than 9%. In today’s market, with a gross margin of a notional £24.51 per bird (according to the latest ADAS costings), that’s nearly £36,000 of opportunity cost. In a multi-tier house, where free range houses are stocked to 15 bird per floor square metre, the reduction of 54 square metres amounts to 810 birds.

We made repeated attempts to reach APHA to seek clarity on how an egg inspector might interpret the combination of rules and regulations. An experienced member of the field team, off the record, advised that ramps would indeed impinge on available floor space, and therefore capacity, but platforms “should not alter the density in principle”.

As one BFREPA member commented, “the fact that we are this far down the road and we are still asking these questions is ridiculous. What makes a mockery of these new rules is that birds have been jumping over 60cm to reach feed and water.”

The new standards come into force on 11th July 2025. Don’t forget, ramps or platforms are needed both inside and out. Our advice to all farms is to check with your local APHA inspector to ensure you understand the potential impact on bird capacity before you install new house furniture. To us, the solution to the problem appears to be to install ramps outside onto the range, and a 30cm wide platform inside the house under the popholes. Just don’t ask us how high they need to be!