How many chicks to start with in Ghana: what the house, the feed bill and your daily hours can carry, and a simple test that picks your number of boxes.
Halaal Farms Ghana team8 July 2026 · 11 min read
A lot of first-time keepers pick a number before they have measured anything. They read that a box holds 50 chicks, they have some money put aside, and they order. The number feels sensible until the birds are in the house and somebody has to carry water to them at six in the morning with a torch in one hand.
This guide is about sizing that first flock. It goes through the house, the feed, the money and your own hours, and then it gives you a way to arrive at a number you can actually manage. The figures come from our current price list. They are "from" prices, and they move with imports and the season, so confirm today's price with us before you set a budget.
The first question is not how many birds you want to sell. It is how many birds the space you have can hold comfortably from the day they arrive until the day they leave. Walk into the house, or the fenced plot if you are brooding outdoors, and measure it. Write the figures down. Then stand in the middle and picture where the feeder will go, where the drinkers will sit, and where the brooder will stand for the first weeks.
Most first batches go into a room that was built for something else: a back store, a shed behind the compound, or a corner of the yard with a roof. A roof that keeps rain off the litter matters more than the size of the plot. Wet litter in a Kasoa rainy season will cause more trouble than a tight fit ever will.
Ask yourself three plain questions. Can you reach every bird for feed and water without climbing over anything? Can you clean the floor and the drinkers in the time you have each day? Is there shade in the afternoon heat, and a wall or a sheet that keeps the cold wind off on harmattan mornings? If two of those answers are no, shrink the order before you pay anything. A smaller flock you can manage is worth more than a bigger one you cannot.
We sell day-old chicks in ventilated boxes of 50, and one box is the minimum order. That means the smallest flock you can start with is 50 birds, not 10. If you wanted a small test, you still have to plan the house, the feed and the hours for 50 from the first morning. Put that fact in your notebook before anything else.
Take a broiler batch and do the sums on the feed. Broilers eat about 4.2 kg of feed each to reach market, over six to seven weeks. Fifty birds at that rate need about 210 kg of feed. A 50 kg bag costs broadly GH₵400 to GH₵470 depending on the brand and the season, so the feed for one box comes to roughly GH₵1,680 to GH₵1,975. That is an estimate worked from those figures, not a quote from a feed shop. The bag price on the day you buy is the one that counts.
Feed is more than half of what a broiler costs you. The chick is the smaller part of the bill once the birds are growing, which surprises people who only look at the box price. Plan the feed line first, and let the number of birds follow from what you can pay for.
Mortality changes the count as well. A well-managed flock loses roughly 3 to 5 per cent. A poorly managed one can lose 10 to 20 per cent. On 50 birds, the good end leaves you selling about 47 to 49 birds. At the poor end you could be selling 40 to 45. If you planned to sell 50, you will feel every one of the missing birds at the market.
Here is the chick cost for four common starting sizes, using the from-prices on our list. Each row is a whole number of boxes. These are chick prices only. They leave out feed, housing, transport and your time, and they assume the breed you choose is available in the week you want it.
| Flock size | Boxes | Ross 308 or Cobb 500 (from GH₵1,000 a box) | Sasso (from GH₵650 a box) | Plymouth or Barred Rock (from GH₵350 a box) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 birds | 1 | GH₵1,000 | GH₵650 | GH₵350 |
| 100 birds | 2 | GH₵2,000 | GH₵1,300 | GH₵700 |
| 150 birds | 3 | GH₵3,000 | GH₵1,950 | GH₵1,050 |
| 500 birds | 10 | GH₵10,000 | GH₵6,500 | GH₵3,500 |
Two things stand out. The jump from one box to ten is not a small step up in risk. And the cheaper breeds reduce the chick bill, but the feed bill arrives in full whichever breed you pick, so do not treat a cheap box as a cheap flock.
For the 100-bird row, the feed works the same way. Two boxes of broilers means about 420 kg of feed over the batch, which is roughly 8.4 bags at GH₵400 to GH₵470, or about GH₵3,360 to GH₵3,950. Put that next to the GH₵2,000 for the chicks and you have an illustrative outlay of about GH₵5,360 to GH₵5,950 before housing, transport and labour. That is the figure to take to the bank or to your partner, not the box price on its own.
Feed is the first thing to be ready, and it is the easiest thing to leave too late. Buy the starter feed before the chicks arrive, not on the morning they do. A bag you have to fetch from town after the box lands is a bag that comes late, and late feed is the start of a bad week.
Once the birds are in the house, feed becomes a daily commitment rather than a one-off purchase. Write down how many bags you open each week. That single record tells you more about your flock than any guess, because it shows how fast the birds are eating and whether bags are going missing from the store.
Keep the bags in a dry store, raised off the floor, with the lid closed. Damp feed loses its quality, and a bag that smells of mould is money thrown away. If you buy in bulk to save on the bag price, buy only what you can keep dry for the weeks you need it. The saving disappears quickly when a stack goes damp in the rains.
A flock of 50 takes a set amount of your time every day, and a flock of 100 takes roughly double the carrying, cleaning and checking. The early days ask for the most. You will look at the chicks in the morning, at midday if you can, and again before dark. You will top up water before you leave for work, not after you come back to find the drinkers empty. You will write down what you see, because a weight you did not note is a weight you cannot compare next week.
Be honest about your week. If you work in Accra and come home late, a flock that needs attention morning and evening will suffer on the days you are not there. If you travel for family or business, you need someone you trust to take over, and you need to pay that person properly for the days they cover. A batch cannot wait for you to come back on Monday.
Harmattan mornings are cold, and you need to look for chicks that huddle together and do not spread out. Hot afternoons need you to look for birds panting with their wings held away from the body, and to check the water use. Neither is a special job. Both are added to the daily round, and they are much easier to manage when the numbers are small enough to see every bird.
A flock is only money once it is sold. Before you pick a number, write down who will buy the birds and on which date. A neighbour, a chop bar that buys regularly, or a regular customer who has asked for birds is a better plan than a hope that the market will be busy when your birds come ready.
Festive demand is real. Christmas and Sallah bring buyers who want birds on a fixed date, and those dates are the ones to work backwards from. A broiler batch takes six to seven weeks to reach market weight, so count back from the festival to the hatch date you need, and then leave a few days of slack for the things that go wrong.
If you plan to sell dual-purpose birds or cockerels, the calendar is different. Those birds take longer than a broiler to reach a size worth selling, so the feed runs for longer before the first sale. Check which bird you are growing before you set the dates, and read our cockerel guide if the festive market is your target.
For most people starting out, one box or two is the honest answer. One box of 50 tells you whether your house, your feeding routine and your buyer all work. Two boxes of 100 is the right size once the house is ready, your hours are clear and a buyer is lined up. Ten boxes is for a farm that already knows its routine and has the people to run it.
Here is a simple test. Write down the feed money you can set aside for the first three weeks without borrowing. Then write down the hours you can give the birds every day. Work out how many boxes each figure supports, and pick the smaller number. If that number comes out below one box, wait until the money or the time is there. Do not round up to a box you cannot feed.
The first batch is also your first set of records. Note the day the birds arrived, the count you found in the box, the weight you took at about the same time each week, the feed you used and the number you lost. Mortality is the figure to watch. Our figures say a well-managed flock loses roughly 3 to 5 per cent, and a poorly managed one loses 10 to 20 per cent. If your first batch sits at the poor end, the next batch should not be bigger until you know why.
Growing in steps works better than a jump. Two boxes after one good batch is a sensible move if the house has room and the buyers are waiting. Five boxes after a rough first batch is a gamble. Let the records decide, not the excitement of a good month at the market.
If you plan to keep layers alongside broilers, treat them as a separate decision with a separate timeline. A layer takes months before she lays, and she eats every day from the start. Read the layer guides before you mix the two on one farm, and keep their feed and their records apart from the first day.
For most first-timers, yes. One box is the smallest order we take, and it gives you a real batch to learn from without tying up money you will need for feed. Start there if the house is small or your hours are tight.
No. Our minimum order is one box of 50 chicks, so plan the feed and the house for 50 from the start.
No payment is taken on the website. An order starts with a message, not with money. Before you pay, we confirm the price, the hatch date and the delivery cost with you. You can pay in cash, by mobile money or by bank transfer.
Chicks that are dead on arrival are replaced free in the next hatch. Keep the box, count what you find when you open it, and tell us as soon as you can so the replacement can be arranged.
Send the order form on our website, or call 024 915 1503. Tell us the breed, the number of boxes and the week you would like to start. You can also write to support@halaalfarmsghana.com.
Once you have a number your house, your feed money and your hours can carry, send the order form on our site or call 024 915 1503. Say how many boxes you want and which breed. We will come back with the price, the hatch date and the delivery cost before anything is paid. If you are still choosing between breeds, read our Ross 308 guide first, and then our guide to how much feed 100 broilers eat to market day. Check the current price list for the from-figures, and use the order page when you are ready to go.
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.
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