Charcoal, gas and electric brooding heat compared for Ghanaian farms: running cost, heat output, fire and carbon monoxide risk, and which suits your flock size.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 14 min read
The real test of a brooding heat source comes at about three in the morning. The air outside is at its coldest, the person on duty is tired or asleep, a charcoal fire loaded at ten has burned low, and if the power was going to fail it has usually failed already. Most chicks that die of chilling do not die at seven in the evening while the farmer is standing over them. They die in the hours before dawn.
So the choice between a charcoal pot, a gas brooder and electric lamps is less about which is cheapest to buy and more about how each one behaves through a whole night, with your flock size, your electricity supply and your labour.
A newly hatched chick cannot hold its own body temperature. It depends on outside heat until it has enough body mass and feather cover, which takes roughly two weeks in broilers and a little longer in layer chicks. In Ghana that usually means heat around the clock in the first week and mainly at night in the second and third. During the rains or the harmattan, a fourth week of night heat is common. The usual starting target is about 32 to 34°C at chick level, coming down by 2 to 3°C each week. The full schedule is in our chick brooding guide.
Measure every heat source against the same five questions.
All three main options are radiant heaters. Glowing charcoal, the hot plate of a gas brooder and an infrared lamp warm the chicks and the litter directly, the way the sun warms your skin, instead of heating the air first. That suits an open-sided house, where warm air escapes through the curtains.
The coal pot is the most widely used brooding heater on small farms for good reasons. The equipment costs very little, charcoal is sold in every town and village, and it works when the grid is down. A well-loaded pot gives strong radiant heat.
Its weaknesses all come from the fact that a charcoal fire cannot be set and left.
How many pots you need depends on the pot, the charcoal and the night. As a starting point, allow one ordinary household pot for a ring of 100 to 150 chicks, have a second ready, and let the thermometer and the chicks decide.
Charcoal that burns with too little air produces carbon monoxide. The gas has no colour and no smell. It takes the place of oxygen in the blood, and it affects chicks and people in the same way. A brooding room wrapped tightly in tarpaulin on a cold night, with a pot burning inside, is exactly the condition in which it builds up.
In chicks the signs are easy to mistake for something else: the birds become drowsy and unresponsive, breathe with effort, stagger, and are found dead near the heat, often in good body condition and without the tight heaps that chilling causes. If a chick is opened soon after death, the blood and tissues can be an unusually bright cherry red. In people, the early signs are headache, dizziness, nausea and weakness.
A badly adjusted gas burner can also produce carbon monoxide. A healthy gas flame is blue, or heats its ceramic plate to an even orange glow. A lazy yellow flame that leaves soot means the burner needs cleaning or adjusting before it is used again. How to keep air moving without chilling chicks is covered in our article on ventilation in open-sided poultry houses.
A gas brooder is a radiant burner that hangs above the chicks and runs on LPG from an ordinary cylinder through a regulator and hose. Depending on the model, one unit is rated by its maker for anything from a few hundred to about 1,000 chicks.
Its strengths are the ones charcoal lacks. The heat is steady from dusk to dawn. It can be turned up or down with a valve, and some models have a thermostat that does this for you. It needs no mains electricity, and nobody has to wake every two hours to feed it.
The costs and risks are different, not absent.
Electric heat is the cleanest of the three. It uses no oxygen, makes no fumes, ash or moisture, holds steady all night and is adjusted simply by raising the lamp, lowering it or switching one off. For a small flock in a place with dependable power it is the easiest way to brood well.
The standard tool is the 250 watt infrared heat lamp sold by poultry equipment dealers. A common working figure is one lamp for 75 to 100 chicks in a curtained house in warm weather, and fewer chicks per lamp on cold nights. Old-style filament bulbs of 100 to 200 watts also give useful heat where you can still find them, on a rough rule of one to two watts per chick. LED and energy-saving bulbs do not. They are built to give light without heat, and chicks under them will chill.
Red infrared lamps have an advantage over clear ones. Chicks under bright white light for 24 hours get no dim period to rest, while red light disturbs them less and makes pecking at each other less likely. Light and dark periods are explained in our guide to lighting programmes for chicks and pullets.
The weaknesses are plain.
| Charcoal pot | Gas brooder | Electric lamps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost to set up | Low | Highest | Low to moderate |
| Running cost pattern | Daily charcoal plus a night attendant | Cylinder refills, little labour | Units on the meter, rising fast with flock size |
| Steadiness of heat | Uneven: strong after loading, weak before dawn | Steady and adjustable | Steady while power lasts |
| Turning it down by day | Awkward: reduce the load or carry it out | Turn the valve | Raise the lamp or switch off |
| Effect on air | Carbon monoxide, ash, dust | Carbon dioxide and moisture | None |
| Fire risk | High: open coals on litter | Moderate: leaks and hoses | Moderate: wiring and fallen lamps |
| Depends on mains power | No | No | Completely |
| Best fit | Up to a few hundred chicks, and as backup on any farm | A few hundred chicks and above | Up to about 200 chicks with reliable power |
Fuel prices in Ghana change too quickly for any printed figure to stay right, so learn the method and put in your own current prices. The cedi figures below are examples only.
A 250 watt lamp uses 0.25 units an hour, or 6 units in 24 hours. For 100 chicks under one lamp: seven days of continuous heat is 42 units, and 14 more nights of 12 hours each is another 42 units, 84 in total. As an example, if your tariff works out at GH₵ 2.00 a unit, that is GH₵ 168, or GH₵ 1.68 per chick.
Find the rating plate on the brooder. If it gives kilowatts, divide by 13 to get the kilograms of LPG burned in an hour at full flame. A 3 kW brooder burns about 0.23 kg an hour. Suppose it runs at half setting around the clock in week one (equal to 12 full-flame hours a day) and at half setting for 12 hours a night in weeks two and three. That is about 2.8 kg a day for 7 days and 1.4 kg a day for 14 days, roughly 39 kg in all, or a little under three 14.5 kg cylinders. As an example, at GH₵ 15 a kilogram that is about GH₵ 580. For 500 chicks, about GH₵ 1.16 per chick.
There is no rating plate on a coal pot, so measure. Weigh the charcoal you load in one full day and night during the first week, and again in the second week. Bag weights vary a great deal, so weigh a bag too. As an example only, if two pots for 300 chicks burn 6 kg a day in week one and 3 kg a day for the next two weeks, that is 84 kg. If your bag weighs 40 kg and costs GH₵ 120, charcoal is GH₵ 3 a kilogram and the batch uses GH₵ 252, or 84 pesewas per chick. Then add the cost of the person who stays awake to refuel.
Put these figures next to the value of the chicks. With broiler chicks priced from GH₵ 20 each on our current price list (prices change), ten chicks lost to one cold night cost at least GH₵ 200, before counting the slower growth of the survivors. The cheapest heat is the one that does not fail. You can test how brooding costs and losses affect a whole batch in the poultry profit calculator.
Whichever you choose, the build around it matters as much as the heater. Ring size, curtains and thermometer position are set out in our guide to setting up a brooder step by step, and the cold-season adjustments are in brooding in the rainy season and the harmattan.
Every heat source fails in its own way. Power goes off, a cylinder empties sooner than expected, the charcoal seller has none on the day. The farms that lose chicks are usually those that discover this at night with nothing else in the house. Before placement, have these in place:
If chicks do start dying in the first days, the pattern of where and when they are found tells you whether heat was the cause. That is worked through in our article on why chicks die in the first week.
Halaal Farms confirms the hatch date and delivery with you before you pay, which gives you a fixed day to have fuel bought and the heater tested. If you are unsure which source fits your house and flock, call 024 915 1503 or send the order form with your numbers. Advice is free, before and after you order.
A common working figure is 75 to 100 chicks per 250 watt infrared lamp in a curtained house in warm weather, and fewer per lamp on cold, wet or windy nights. Treat it as a starting point. Hang the lamp 45 to 60 cm above the litter, watch how the chicks spread, and add a second lamp if they crowd tightly under the first.
No. Burning charcoal gives off carbon monoxide, a gas with no smell or colour that kills people as well as chicks. Never sleep in a closed room with a charcoal fire. The night attendant should sleep in a separate, ventilated space and come in to check the chicks, and the brooding area should always have an open gap at the top of the curtains.
No. LED and compact fluorescent bulbs are designed to turn electricity into light with very little heat, so they brighten the brooder without warming it. Chicks under them will chill at night. For electric brooding you need infrared heat lamps or old-style filament bulbs, and for anything more than a few boxes of chicks, gas or charcoal is usually the more practical source.
Plan for heat day and night in the first week, then mainly at night in the second and third weeks. In warm, dry weather many broiler flocks need little heat after about two weeks. During the rains, in the harmattan or in the north where nights are colder, expect to give night heat into the fourth week. Layer chicks, keets and turkey poults usually need heat for longer than broilers.
Written by the Halaal Farms Ghana team. We hatch and import day-old chicks at Opeikuma, Kasoa, and deliver to all 16 regions. This article is general guidance for farmers. For diagnosis and treatment of sick birds, speak to a vet or your district veterinary office.
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.
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.
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.
