100 practical guides for Ghanaian farmers, from the first box of day-old chicks to the day you sell. Search for a problem or pick a topic.
Four guides that prevent the most expensive beginner mistakes: planning the farm, judging chick quality, the first week, and vaccination.
A ten-step roadmap for a first poultry farm in Ghana, from finding buyers to selling the first batch, with a wall countdown and links to the detailed guide for each step.
Read the guidePick a topic or use the search box above. Every article ends with a way to reach us if you want chicks or advice.
A ten-step roadmap for a first poultry farm in Ghana, from finding buyers to selling the first batch, with a wall countdown and links to the detailed guide for each step.
A ten-minute inspection you can do at the hatchery gate or the bus station: which chicks to pull from the box, what to look at on each one, and which faults are grounds to refuse the batch.
A measured, step-by-step build for the brooding area: how big to make the ring for any flock, what to make it from, how to lay out heat, feed and water, and when to expand it.
A working calendar for one broiler batch. For each week it lists the temperature, feed, space, checks and jobs that fall due, from the day before the chicks arrive to the morning the birds are loaded.
What has to happen in each stage of the 18-week rearing period so that pullets reach the laying house at the right weight, evenly grown and fully vaccinated, with the checks to make along the way.
Each stage of a bird's life needs a different feed, and the wrong one does real damage. Here is what starter, grower, finisher and layer feeds contain, when to switch, and how feed form and concentrate fit in.
Broilers need a short programme built around Newcastle and Gumboro. Layers need those plus a long list of boosters before the first egg. See example timings, the reasons behind them and the records to keep.
The fixed decisions in a poultry house, explained with measurements: which way it faces, how wide and high to build, how far the roof overhangs, and how to keep the floor dry in the rains.
A stage-by-stage walk through a commercial hatchery, from the egg store to the delivery box, with the quality checks made at each step and what they mean for the chicks you receive.
How guinea fowl differ from chickens, where the buyers are, which rearing system fits your land, how to house and feed the birds, and how survival decides whether a batch pays.
Finished broilers and fresh eggs cannot wait for a buyer. This guide compares the main sales channels in Ghana and shows how to line up orders, deposits and a fallback plan before the chicks arrive.
A working guide to a poultry business plan: the seven sections, the figures you must collect yourself, a labelled 500-broiler example and five stress tests that show where the plan breaks.
Twelve questions to put to any hatchery or chick seller before you send money, why each one matters to your flock, and how to tell a solid answer from one that should make you cautious.
How charcoal pots, gas brooders and electric lamps really behave through a brooding night, how to work out the fuel bill with your own prices, and how to use charcoal without poisoning chicks or people.
A weekly weighing routine for broiler farmers: how to pick an honest sample, the weights to compare against from day 7 to day 42, the average and uniformity sums, and what to do when the flock is behind.
Work through the causes of an egg drop in the order they most often occur, starting with water and feed, and learn the signs that separate a management fault from disease, moult, age, theft or heat.
Home-mixed feed can lower your cost per bag or quietly raise your cost per crate. This guide covers ingredients, premix, equipment, quality checks and the sum that tells you which way it will go.
A vaccine only works if it reaches the bird alive and in a full dose. This is the practical method: carrying vaccine cold, preparing the water, eye-drop and injection technique, and the mistakes that cause failures.
Space allowances for broilers, layers, Sasso, cockerels, guinea fowl, turkeys and quail in open-sided houses, with the sums for turning your floor area into a chick order and adjusting it for the hot months.
A practical run-through of a 21-day hatch in a tabletop incubator: what to buy, how to test it before trusting it, what to do each day, and how to handle lockdown, hatch day and cleaning.
A six-week plan for keeping guinea keets alive: the heat they need, the floor they can grip, the feed that suits them, drinkers they cannot drown in, and how to teach them where home is.
A plain guide to the records that matter on a poultry farm, with notebook layouts you can rule by hand and the few sums that turn daily figures into decisions about health and money.
Broilers return your money in about seven weeks; layers take five months to start paying and then pay every day. This comparison shows which pattern fits your savings, time and buyers.
Imported and locally hatched chicks usually share the same genetics. What differs is the journey, the price drivers, the supply through the year and the antibodies they carry. Here is how to weigh them.
A diagnostic guide to first-week chick deaths. Use the day, the place and the look of each dead chick to tell chilling from overheating, starve-outs, navel infection, piling and weak chicks, then fix the cause.
Feed cost per kilo of broiler depends on how much feed each kilo takes and what you pay for it. These ten habits lower both without starving the birds or buying additives.
Learn to calculate hen-day production correctly, judge your flock against a normal laying curve, and work through feed, water, light, heat and health in the order that moves the percentage most.
A buyer's and storekeeper's guide to maize and soya for poultry: Ghana's harvest calendar, the 13 per cent moisture rule, weevil control, pallets and stacking, and a worked sum for deciding how much to stock.
Newcastle disease can empty an unvaccinated house in a week and has no cure. Learn how it spreads, what the signs look like, why village flocks die each dry season, and exactly what to do if it reaches you.
A practical guide to air in naturally ventilated houses: how wind and rising heat move it, how to set curtains by age and time of day, how to judge ammonia without a meter, and where fans fit.
A practical guide to candling chicken eggs with a torch: what a living embryo, a clear egg, a blood ring and a late death look like at each check, plus a record sheet that shows where your losses come from.
A plan for rearing turkeys for Christmas in Ghana, from the date the poults must arrive to brooding, feeding by phase, housing space, protecting them from blackhead, and taking orders before December.
A working method for pricing poultry in Ghana: the full cost of a bird and of a crate, the difference between margin and markup, a floor price, and rules for discounts and credit.
Nobody can give you one figure, but the quantities hardly change: bags of feed, square metres of floor, feeders and drinkers. Here they are for 100, 500 and 1,000 birds, ready for your local prices.
The two best-known broiler breeds are closer than the arguments about them suggest. See where they are said to differ, what changes results on an open-sided Ghanaian farm, and how to test both yourself.
The rains bring damp litter and wind-driven water. The harmattan brings dust, dry air and nights far colder than the afternoons. Here is how to adjust heat, curtains, litter and water for each.
Heat kills the heaviest broilers in the last days before sale. This guide explains why, shows the signs in order, and sets out the house, stocking, water and feeding changes that prevent it, plus an afternoon emergency plan.
Match the shell defect you see to its likely cause, then correct it: calcium amount and particle size, phosphorus, vitamin D3, the age of the flock, heat, disease, frights and rough handling.
Aflatoxin slows growth, cuts egg numbers and weakens vaccine response long before birds look sick. Learn how grain becomes contaminated, the warning signs in a bag, how to sample for testing and when to refuse a load.
Gumboro kills fast between three and six weeks of age and leaves survivors with a damaged immune system. Learn the signs, why vaccine timing is tricky, and how to clear the virus from a house.
How each type of poultry feeder works, how many birds it really serves, how to set its height, and how to count and cost what your flock needs, from a backyard pen to several thousand birds.
How to carry out a break-out on unhatched eggs, age the dead embryos by what you can see, and trace each pattern of loss back to the breeder flock, egg storage or the incubator settings.
Quail lay at six to eight weeks and fit in a spare room, but the egg market is narrow. Here is how to house, feed, hatch and handle them, and how to check demand before you scale up.
The main ways Ghanaian farmers pay for chicks, feed and housing, what each one really costs, what lenders want to see, and how to match the type of money to broilers or layers.
Keeping 50 to 200 birds at home is mostly about space, dry litter, neighbours and security. Here is what fits in a compound, how to house it simply, and what a family can expect to eat and sell.
Hy-Line, Lohmann, Bovans and ISA layers are closer on paper than their supporters admit. The choice that changes your feed bill and your egg price is brown or white. Here is how to decide.
How to choose litter from what is available in Ghana, lay it to the right depth, keep it dry through the batch and spot the early signs of ammonia, caking, footpad burns and breast blisters.
Slow-growing broilers have about a dozen common causes. This guide shows how three simple facts (weight, evenness and feed eaten) point to the right one, and what to check and fix in each case.
A side-by-side look at battery cages and deep litter for laying hens: what each costs per bird place, the work and disease problems each brings, and which kind of farmer each system suits.
Work out how much water your flock needs each day, what each water source in Ghana can carry, how to clean tanks and drinkers, the basics of chlorination and simple ways to keep water cool.
Coccidiosis is a gut parasite that multiplies in damp litter and peaks at three to six weeks. See how the cycle works, what each type looks like, and how feed, litter, vaccine and treatment fit together.
An honest comparison of the three drinking systems used on Ghanaian poultry farms, covering how many birds each serves, the water pressure it needs, where it wets the litter and the daily work it demands.
A working guide to choosing eggs for the incubator by weight, shape, shell and cleanliness, and to storing them cool, humid and the right way up so they still hatch well after several days.
A practical guide to Sasso chickens in Ghana: what weights to expect and when, how to run a house-and-run system, how to feed without overspending, and where coloured birds sell best.
How to win and keep institutional egg buyers: working out what you can promise, grading and packing, delivery routines, the paperwork they expect, and keeping credit from draining your feed money.
A practical way to inspect land before you build: what to look for after rain, how much water you need, how far to keep from neighbours and other flocks, and which land questions to ask before paying.
Heat and stale air kill far more chicks on the road than hunger does. Learn how to box, stack, ventilate and time a journey, and what to do when a bus, barrier or breakdown holds you up.
Working figures for feeder and drinker space from day one to sale or point of lay, how to calculate what your equipment can carry, and the signs that birds are competing for a place.
Lame birds, swollen bellies and healthy broilers found dead on their backs are all linked to very fast growth. Learn to tell them apart and which management changes reduce each one.
A practical method for finding the hens that eat without laying: five physical checks you can do in seconds, a test pen for doubtful birds, the right time to cull and how to sell the culls.
FCR is kilos of feed divided by kilos of live weight. See it worked through for a 500-bird broiler batch, turned into cedis per kilo, checked mid-batch and adapted for layers as feed per crate of eggs.
Sneezing and rattling in a flock can mean CRD, infectious coryza, infectious bronchitis or simply bad air. Learn how the three diseases differ, what to fix first, and why a vet diagnosis saves money.
A day-by-day turnaround for the empty house: what to remove, how to wash, how much disinfectant to mix, how to clean tanks and drinkers, and how long to rest the house before new chicks.
What it takes to produce your own fertile eggs: which birds breed true, how many cocks to keep, why layer mash is not breeder feed, how to check fertility in fresh eggs and when to replace males.
Kuroiler and Noiler birds grow bigger and lay more than local chickens, but only with brooding, a secure night house and a daily supplement. Here is how to manage them and hatch replacements.
A practical way to list the threats to your flock and your cash, cut the odds of each, build a reserve, ask the right questions about insurance and write a one-page emergency plan.
A plain map of the offices a growing poultry farm meets in Ghana, what each one is concerned with, the order to approach them in and how to deal with them without wasting time or money.
A timeline that starts two hours before the vehicle arrives and ends the next morning, with the temperatures, counts and crop-fill targets that tell you whether your chicks have started properly.
A hands-on guide to the small problems that show up in the first two weeks: what each one looks like, what to do in the first ten minutes, and when it points to a fault in the whole brooder.
A practical method for choosing your broiler sale day: the daily feed-against-gain sum, how per-kilo and per-bird pricing change the answer, and what waiting for a better price really costs you.
Follow the egg from the nest to the buyer: a collection timetable, nest management, what to do with dirty eggs, grading by quality and size, storage in hot weather and transport without breakages.
Find out how much feed your farm is losing and where it goes. Covers feeder fill level and height, stale feed, beak condition, rats, wild birds and store losses, with simple tests to measure each one.
Fowl pox scabs combs and blocks throats; Marek's paralyses legs and grows tumours. See how each spreads, when and how the vaccines are given, and what you must still do on the farm.
Work out how many tonnes your birds will leave behind, then keep that manure dry, compost it properly, sell it to crop farmers at the right season and apply it to your own fields without burning them.
A stage-by-stage guide to what an outage does to incubating eggs, how to keep them warm and breathing without electricity, how to work out the backup power you need, and how to finish the hatch afterwards.
A cockerel chick costs little, but it eats for five months. This guide works through the cost per bird, the stocking dates for Christmas and Easter, a three-phase feeding plan and what live-market buyers pay for.
Fifteen concrete mistakes that cost new poultry farmers their first batches, set out in the order you meet them, each with the reason it hurts and a fix you can apply before your chicks arrive.
Festive birds are sold in a window of a few days, so the placement date decides everything. Here is how to count back for each type of bird, when to book and how to stagger batches.
Beak trimming limits the damage from feather pecking in layer flocks, but only when it is done early, precisely and by a trained hand. Here is what to expect, what to prepare and how to judge the result.
How to turn live broilers into clean, well-chilled dressed chicken on a small farm, from the last feed to the freezer, with the temperatures, timings and hygiene habits that keep the meat safe and saleable.
Feathers on the floor and fewer eggs in the trays usually mean an older flock is moulting. Here is how to confirm it, feed through it and decide whether a second laying cycle pays.
Cassava, palm kernel cake, local fishmeal and insect larvae can lower feed cost, but each has a ceiling and a catch. Here is what each one replaces, what goes wrong, and how to cost it properly.
Bird flu kills poultry fast and can infect people who handle sick birds. Learn the signs, the steps to take in the first hour, what happens after you report, and how to keep the virus off your farm.
A part-by-part guide to building a cheap but sound poultry house: which local materials work for posts, walls, floor and roof, which savings cost you birds, and how to upgrade the house in stages.
The three ways day-old chicks are sorted into pullets and cockerels, which breeds each method works on, how many males to expect in a sexed box, and where the cockerels end up.
Most local chicks die before eight weeks, and most of those deaths are preventable. Here are five low-cost steps, from night housing to improved cocks, that let a village flock raise twice as many birds.
A working system for the salaried owner: which birds suit an absent farmer, what the caretaker must report each evening, how to reconcile birds, feed and eggs from a distance, and the signs that it is no longer paying.
Your starting number is the smallest of four limits: what the floor holds, what your feed money can finish, what your buyers will take and what you can manage. Here is how to work out each one.
Day length controls when a pullet starts to lay. This guide sets out a lighting programme for open-sided houses in Ghana, from the first bright days to stimulation at point of lay, with advice for farms on unreliable power.
How to run broilers as single-age batches: what the empty days between flocks achieve, the arithmetic of cycles per year, timing batches for festive demand and rotating several houses without mixing ages.
Blood on one hen can turn into a pen-wide habit within days. This guide gives the emergency steps, explains each trigger in a Ghanaian open-sided house and sets out prevention from the brooder onwards.
Most sachets on the agro-vet shelf are extras on top of a feed that already contains vitamins. This guide explains what each class of additive does, when it earns its price and when to leave it in the shop.
Disease is carried onto a farm by boots, crates, birds and vehicles. These twenty measures, ordered from the gate to the bird, block those routes with a padlock, spare boots, a brush and a notebook.
What a good farm hand does from dawn to dusk, how to choose and train one, how to house and pay staff, which bonuses work, and practical controls that stop eggs, feed and birds leaving unrecorded.
Fake sellers, vanishing deposits, cockerels passed off as pullets and old chicks sold as day-olds all follow patterns. Learn the warning signs, how to verify a seller and how to pay without exposing yourself.
A point-of-lay pullet costs several times the price of a day-old chick. This article breaks down what sits inside that gap, how soon each route earns, and how to inspect grown birds before you buy.
Parasites seldom kill a flock outright. They take feed, blood and eggs a little every day. Learn where each one lives, how to find it after dark, and why treating the bird alone often fails.
A flock shows it is falling ill a day or two before the first bird dies. This guide sets out a daily walk-through, what droppings colours can suggest, and the point at which to call the vet.
Antibiotics treat bacterial disease and nothing else. Learn why the day-one sachet wastes money, how resistance builds, what a vet's diagnosis adds, and how to count withdrawal days for meat and eggs.
Rats eat and foul feed, snakes follow the rats, and wild birds bring disease through the mesh. This guide covers the gaps to close, the ground to clear, a rat-proof feed store and safe baiting.
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