I am a baal teshuva. My wife is a ger. We obviously have no family minhagim. When we started keeping kosher we adopted 3 hours. Is there any flexibility (especially on poultry) to keep less and go with the Dutch Minhag?
It is true that there are various minhagim regarding the waiting time between meat and dairy. Nevertheless the Rav rules that the preferred waiting time is 6 hours. The definition of 6 hours would be into the sixth hour, so in fact, 5 complete hours and one minute would constitute “into” the sixth hour. Additionally regarding your second question, there is no difference between poultry and meat vis a`vis the waiting period.