Regulations relating to killing and processing birds (or indeed anyother animal) are complex and inconsistent. If you are intending doingmore than home kill for home consumption they can be a minefield.

There are two levels of regulation:
•    Exempt slaughter facilities.  The exempt licence was originallycreated for farmers wishing to raise Christmas poultry. For some oddreason it was originally administered by the planning officer for thearea. Now, more properly, the Environmental Health Office (EHO) hastaken this role. The key thing with an EHO license is that you are onlyallowed to kill your own birds. It was designed to suit small scaleseasonal production, and is limited to 10000 birds a year. You can sellto retailers but not wholesalers, and only then in your own and theneighbouring authorities (although if you are selling by mail order youcan sell to anyone). It does not require a vet to be present when youare killing and requires a relatively low level of investment
•    Meat Hygiene Service (MHS).  An MHS licence allows you to sell toanyone, anywhere. There is no limit on numbers and you can kill otherpeople’s birds. However, a vet has to be present every time you kill oreviscerate, for which you have to pay (about £60/hour) and he or shehas to be booked a month in advance. The level of initial investmentwill be higher, as the facilities will have to meet MHS standards.
Regardless of  which level you are licensed at, there are certain key requirements, these are:
•    Washable floors and walls with good drainage. Plastic coatedcladding and a resin floor are the regulator’s materials of choice butthey are expensive. A resin paint for the walls and polished concretefloors are cheaper options while still meet the standards though willrequire more maintenance.
•    Killing and eviscerating must be separated by space or time.
•    Packing and cutting, likewise must be separated from theevisceration operation by space or time (eg you can carry theseoperations out in the same area provided that after evisceration thearea is cleaned down before packing or cutting is started. If carriedout at the same time must be separated by space, eg carried out in adifferent area)
•    You must have fridges capable of reducing the temperate to 40C (as opposed to just holding it there).
Buildings
Planning
If you are contemplating converting an existing farm building to aslaughter facility for an exempt licence you should be able to achievethis without requiring planning permission for change of use. This ison the basis that it is an extension of the farm business; the onwardprocessing of your birds. Precedents have established this although,not having required planning, documented evidence is not always easy tofind.  The final decision is down to your planning office.

As discussed above the floor and walls must be washable, and good drainage is imperative. It is a misconception that facilities have to be large and complicated. You can, and some people do, run a small operation (100 birds a day) in a 40ft old fridge trailer. They are small which limits the number of people that can work in them, and you have to leave time between killing and evisceration. However  the walls and floor are adequate and if you partition the far end you can  utilise the existing fridge unit, if it has the capacity to deal with warm bodies.
In terms of process, you move from ‘dirty’ through to ‘clean’ areas. The birds come into the  lairage, from there to the killing area, eviscerating, cutting and packaging area, strictly in that order and then exit as the finished product. Ideally the whole building should be sloping down to the dirty area
Process and equipment
In a small scale facility the birds are normally placed head first into a cone on a carousel, they are stunned and then bled. It takes about a minute and a half for a bird to bleed to death. By the time the sixth bird is stunned and bled the first is dead and is put into the scald tank cage. Once the scald tank has six birds in it, it is turned on. The scald tank holds a volume of water at around 540C. The cage with the six birds in it rotates in this water for around a minute and a half. From there they are manually removed and placed into the bowl plucker. The bowl plucker is a series of rotating rubber fingers. Thirty seconds in this machine will see the birds plucked. The wings and legs can either then be finished by hand or with a finishing machine. With such equipment two people can kill and pluck around 120 chickens per hour.
Normally the plucked birds are stored on wheeled A frames which, when full, move into the eviscerating area. This should be separated by a door if eviscerating is to be carried out while killing is still in progress. This is to stop air borne contamination while eviscerating.  Once eviscerated and dressed, (if necessary), they are placed into the chillers. Cutting and packing are best done when the bird is cold.
Waterfowl cannot go through a wet plucking system described above. To get over the water proofing oils secreted by these birds a wet plucking system has to run at a very high temp. This will normally damage the skins of the birds. Instead such birds have to be plucked manually either by hand or with a dry plucker and then dipped in hot wax. After cooling in water the wax is peeled off removing any remaining down. It is possible for two people to kill, pluck and wax around 30-40 ducks per hour with this type of equipment.

A small scale slaughter facility (up to 400-500/ day) will need:
•    Shackles, Carousel, (£200-300),
•    stunner, (£250),
•    scald tank, (£2000)
•    bowl plucker, (£2000-2500),
•    finishing machine, (1500-2000)
•    eviscerating table, (800),
•    stainless steel tables,
•    scales,
•    over wrapper,
•    knives (1000)
Using  good second hand machinery you would expect to pay £7000 – £10,000 for chickens For ducks you also need a
•    dry plucking machine (£2500-3000)
•    a wax bath, (£700).