Fifteen specific errors that sink first poultry batches in Ghana, from buying chicks with no buyer to cold brooders and mixed ages, each with a practical fix.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 12 min read
Most of the losses on a first poultry batch are decided before the chicks are ten days old, and some before they are even ordered. They rarely come from an exotic disease. They come from ordinary decisions: when the feed money was counted, when the heat was lit, who was allowed through the gate. The fifteen mistakes below are set out in the order a new farmer meets them, each with the reason it costs money and what to do instead.
A broiler is ready at about six weeks whether or not anyone wants it. From that day it eats close to 200 grams of feed daily and puts on less and less for it. Five hundred unsold broilers consume nearly two bags of feed every day you wait, and a buyer who knows you are stuck will name his own price.
The fix: sell first, then stock. Before ordering, list the chop bars, caterers, market women and households who will take birds, with numbers and prices agreed in principle. Stock only what those named buyers can absorb within about a week of the sale date. Work backwards from that date to the hatch date, especially for Christmas, Easter and Eid. Where to look for customers is covered in our guide to finding buyers for broilers and eggs.
Feed takes roughly two-thirds of the cost of producing a broiler or an egg. New farmers price the chicks, the roofing sheets and the drinkers, then run short of feed money in week four, which is the worst possible time because that is when the birds eat most.
The fix: do the feed sum before any other. A broiler eats about 4 to 4.5 kg from day-old to market weight. For 500 birds that is about 2,100 kg, or 42 bags of 50 kg. As an example, if a bag costs GH₵ 400, the feed bill is GH₵ 16,800, well above the cost of the chicks themselves. Layers are harder still: each pullet eats roughly 6.5 to 7 kg before she lays her first egg, so 500 pullets need about 70 bags with no income at all. Put your own local prices into the poultry profit calculator and have the whole feed budget in hand, or firmly arranged, before the chicks come.
The chick is a small part of what a finished bird costs, but it sets the limit on everything that follows. A weak, undersized or unvaccinated chick eats the same feed as a good one and returns less. Chicks of unknown origin sold from the back of a car are often leftovers, mixed batches or birds already two or three days old.
The fix: buy from a source that will tell you the breed, the hatch date and the vaccines already given, and that states its replacement terms before you pay. At Halaal Farms chicks are vaccinated at the hatchery before they leave, chicks that arrive dead are replaced free in the next hatch, and price, hatch date and delivery cost are confirmed before payment. Current starting prices are on the day-old chick price list. Whoever you buy from, open the boxes on arrival, count, and look for bright eyes, dry fluff and healed navels.
A handsome block house with nothing left for feed is a common sight. Birds do not grow faster under an expensive roof. They need a dry floor, shade, moving air, protection from rain and thieves, and enough feeders and drinkers.
The fix: build a sound, simple open-sided house sized for the first batches, and keep back enough working capital for at least one full cycle of feed, vaccines, litter and wages. Improve the building from profits once the business has proved itself.
A day-old chick cannot control its own body temperature. If the litter is cold when it is placed, it loses heat through its feet, huddles with the others and stops searching for feed and water. The deaths appear between day three and day six, long after the cold night that caused them, and are blamed on the hatchery.
The fix: light the heat source ahead of time, the evening before in the rainy season or the harmattan, so that the litter itself is warm to the back of your hand. Aim for about 32 to 34°C at chick height for the first few days, then reduce gradually each week. Trust the chicks more than the thermometer:
The next morning pick up a sample and feel the crops. At least 95 in 100 should be full and soft. The full routine is in our chick brooding guide, and the patterns behind early deaths are explained in why chicks die in the first week.
Having learned that chicks need heat, many beginners wrap the house completely in plastic and tarpaulin. Charcoal pots then fill it with carbon monoxide, which has no smell, and the litter starts to give off ammonia. Chicks become dull, their eyes water, and some die without any sign of infection. The same gas is a danger to the person sleeping in the house.
The fix: warmth and fresh air together. Leave a gap along the top of the curtains on the side away from the wind so that stale air can escape above the chicks' heads. If your eyes sting or you feel drowsy inside, the birds have already had too much.
A house that looks roomy on day one is full by week four. In a crowded house the strong birds eat and the timid ones wait, so the flock ends up uneven: some birds at market weight and many well under it. Crowding also wets the litter and raises the heat.
The fix: decide the number of chicks from the floor area, not the other way round. In open-sided houses in our climate, about ten broilers per square metre at market age is a sensible ceiling, and layers on deep litter need close to twice the floor area each. Widen the brooding ring every few days and add feeders and drinkers as the birds grow. If birds are queueing at the feeders, you need more of them.
Birds drink about twice the weight of what they eat, and more in heat. Five hundred broilers at five weeks need well over 150 litres a day. When the drinkers run dry at two in the afternoon, the birds stop eating as well, and a day's growth is lost. Slimy drinkers and tanks standing in full sun spread gut infections and deliver water too warm for the birds to drink.
The fix: scrub the drinkers every morning, keep the tank shaded and covered, and check the water again in the early afternoon. Store at least two days' supply on the farm. If you would not drink the water yourself, do not ask the birds to grow on it.
When money is tight, the temptation is to buy the cheapest bag, stretch good feed with maize bran, or keep broilers on a low-protein ration. The birds grow slowly, the batch runs an extra two weeks, and the total feed bill ends up higher than it would have been. Feed stacked against a damp wall or straight on the floor goes mouldy, and mouldy feed damages the liver and the bird's defences against disease.
The fix: judge feed by what it costs to produce a kilogram of bird, not by the price on the bag. Use the right ration for the age. Stack bags on pallets away from the wall, buy no more than two or three weeks' supply at a time, and reject any bag that smells musty or has lumps. Fill feeders about one-third full so that birds do not flick feed onto the litter.
Older birds carry infections they have already survived. Put a new batch of chicks beside them and the chicks meet those infections before their own protection has developed. A farm that always holds some birds never gets the empty, cleaned rest that breaks the cycle, and each batch does slightly worse than the one before.
The fix: one age on the site at a time wherever possible, with the house cleaned, disinfected and rested between batches. If you must keep two ages, put them in separate houses at least 15 to 20 metres apart, always tend the youngest first, and keep separate boots and equipment for each house. Chickens, turkeys and ducks should not share a house or a yard. The planning behind this is set out in our article on all-in, all-out broiler production.
A vaccine carried home in a pocket, mixed into chlorinated tap water or given a week late protects nothing. The farmer believes the flock is covered until Newcastle disease or Gumboro proves otherwise. The second half of this mistake follows: when birds fall sick, a mixture of antibiotics is bought on a shopkeeper's suggestion. Antibiotics do nothing against viral diseases, they cost money, and they can leave residues in meat and eggs.
The fix: ask the district veterinary officer or a private vet for a vaccination programme suited to your area, and ask the hatchery what the chicks have already received. Carry vaccines on ice, follow the instructions for mixing, and write down the date and batch of each one. When deaths rise, take fresh dead birds to a vet for a post-mortem before buying any medicine.
Friends who keep birds come to admire yours. Buyers walk into the house to choose, carrying crates that were on another farm that morning. A neighbour borrows a feeder and returns it unwashed. Each of these is a direct route for disease from one flock to the next.
The fix: nobody enters the house except the people who work in it. Sell at the gate. Keep farm-only boots and a footbath that is refreshed daily at the door, own your crates, and wash and disinfect anything that returns to the farm. Dead birds go into a covered pit or are burned, never thrown into the bush for dogs to carry around the village.
Without records, a farmer cannot say what a bird cost to produce, whether the last batch made money, or when the trouble began. Feed disappears, deaths creep upward and nothing shows it. Many people who believe they made a profit were simply counting sales and forgetting their costs.
The fix: one exercise book per batch, filled in every day: deaths, bags of feed opened, anything unusual, and every cedi spent or received. Weigh a sample of birds weekly. At the end, divide total cost by birds sold to get your cost per bird, the one figure that tells you what price you can accept. Layouts you can copy are in our guide to poultry records every farmer should keep.
Many farms are run by a young relative or a boy from the village who has never raised a chick, while the owner visits on Sundays. Chicks need attention several times a day and through the night in the first week. An untrained hand misses the early signs, and an unsupervised one learns quickly that nobody counts the feed bags or the eggs.
The fix: work the first batch alongside the worker yourself, so that you both know what normal looks like. Give a written daily routine, require a short report by phone each evening with deaths and feed used, and visit at times nobody expects. Count the birds and the feed stock on every visit. More on this is in our article on hiring and managing poultry farm workers.
One batch of 200 goes well, so the next is 2,000. But a good first batch often owes something to luck: a clean new house, cool weather, eager buyers. At ten times the size, the feed bill is ten times larger, a brooding error kills ten times as many, and the market that easily took 200 birds cannot take 2,000 in a week.
The fix: set targets and require three batches in a row to meet them before you grow. Reasonable targets for broilers are total losses under five in every hundred, average weight on target at the planned sale age, and every bird sold within a week. Then increase by no more than double, and confirm first that the floor space, equipment, feed money and buyers for the larger number are all in place.
Go through this list honestly before any money leaves your hand. If you cannot tick a line, deal with that first.
If the list is ticked, you are ready for chicks. Send the order form or call Halaal Farms on 024 915 1503 with your sale date and house size. The minimum order is one box of 50, which is a sensible size for learning, and advice before and after an order is free. For meat birds, the breeds and what each needs are described on the broiler day-old chicks page.
Buying chicks before finding buyers. Broilers reach market weight at about six weeks and go on eating heavily every day after that, so a farmer with no buyer either sells cheaply or watches the feed bill swallow the margin. Count the birds your known customers will take in one week and stock no more than that for the first batch.
A well-run broiler batch commonly loses fewer than five birds in every hundred from day-old to sale, with no more than one or two of those in the first week. Losses well above that point to a problem with brooding, water, feed or disease. Record every death daily, because the day and age at which birds die tell a vet a great deal.
A bulb or charcoal pot that was lit only when the chicks arrived leaves the litter cold, and chicks lose heat through their feet. Chilled chicks huddle, stop looking for feed and water and die over the next few days. Heat the brooder ahead of time, check that chicks spread evenly, and feel their crops the next morning to confirm they have eaten.
After three consecutive batches have met your own targets for mortality, weight and sales, and your buyers are asking for more than you can supply. Increase by no more than double at a time. Each step should be matched by enough floor space, feeders, drinkers, working capital for feed and supervision, since problems grow faster than flock size.
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 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.
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.
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.
