Work out your first flock size from floor space, feed money, buyers and experience, see why 100 to 300 birds is the best classroom, and when to scale up.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 12 min read
The right number of chicks for a first flock is the smallest of four figures: what your floor can hold, what your feed money can carry to the last day, what your buyers will take in one week, and what you can personally look after. Most beginners work out one of the four, usually the floor, and order to that. Then the feed money runs out in week five, or 300 finished broilers stand eating while the farmer looks for customers.
Work out all four. Each takes a few minutes with a tape measure, a notebook and some phone calls. The smallest answer is your starting number, and for most new farmers it lands between 100 and 300 birds.
Measure the inside of the house or room in metres and multiply length by width. Take away any area used for feed storage or a walkway. What remains is the floor your birds will live on when they are full size, which is the size that counts.
| Bird | Birds per square metre on deep litter | What a 4 m by 5 m room (20 square metres) holds |
|---|---|---|
| Broilers to market weight | 8 to 10 | 160 to 200 |
| Layers | 5 to 6 | 100 to 120 |
| Sasso, Kuroiler, Noiler, cockerels | 6 to 8, with an outside run if possible | 120 to 160 |
These figures are for open-sided, naturally ventilated houses in a hot country. Use the lower end if the roof is low, the room has openings on one side only, or the birds will reach market weight in the hottest months. Crowding gives you wet litter, uneven birds and deaths from heat in the final week, when each loss is most expensive. Space for every type and age of bird is set out in our stocking density guide.
Write the number down. It is a ceiling, not a target.
Chicks are the cheap part. Feed is usually the largest cost in any batch, and it is the one that stops beginners. The sum has to be done before the chicks are ordered, and it has to reach the day of sale.
Plan on 4 to 5 kg of feed for each broiler raised to six or seven weeks. For 100 birds that is 400 to 500 kg, or eight to ten 50 kg bags. The important thing is when that feed is eaten.
| Week | Approximate share of all feed | For 100 broilers on a 450 kg budget |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4% | 18 kg |
| 2 | 8% | 36 kg |
| 3 | 14% | 63 kg |
| 4 | 19% | 86 kg |
| 5 | 25% | 112 kg |
| 6 | 30% | 135 kg |
The shares are rounded from typical broiler intake patterns, and real flocks vary. The shape does not: more than half the feed goes in during the last two weeks. A beginner who spends freely in weeks one to three and has "a little left" for the end has made the commonest money mistake in broiler keeping. Birds that are short of feed in week five do not wait. They stop growing, and you sell late and light.
Now turn it into cedis with your own prices. Here is the method with example figures only:
| Item for 100 broilers | How to work it out | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Chicks | 100 x price per chick | 100 x GH₵ 20 = GH₵ 2,000 |
| Feed | 9 bags x price per 50 kg bag | 9 x GH₵ 400 = GH₵ 3,600 |
| Litter, heat, vaccines, medicines, water, transport | Ask local suppliers and add it up | GH₵ 600 |
| Total running cost | GH₵ 6,200, or GH₵ 62 per bird |
The chick figure uses our starting price for broiler chicks, checked on 2 October 2026. Prices change, so confirm the current one on the price list. The feed price and the other costs are examples to show the sum, not quotations. Housing, feeders, drinkers and a heat source are separate one-off costs, which our article on how much capital a poultry farm needs goes through.
Then divide. Take the money you have for running costs, hold back about a fifth as a reserve for a price rise or a sick week, and divide the remainder by your cost per bird. With GH₵ 14,000 as an example, a reserve of GH₵ 2,800 leaves GH₵ 11,200, and GH₵ 11,200 divided by GH₵ 62 is 180 birds. That is your second limit.
Layers change the sum completely, because nothing comes back for about five months. A pullet eats roughly 7 kg of feed from day-old to point of lay at around 18 weeks, so 100 pullets need about 14 bags before the first egg. Once laying, each hen eats in the region of 115 g of feed a day, which for 100 hens is about 11.5 kg a day or seven bags a month. Egg numbers climb over several weeks, so budget for roughly 22 to 24 bags per 100 birds before egg sales reliably cover the feed bill.
Compare that with nine bags for 100 broilers, returned in seven weeks. A beginner whose feed money supports 300 broilers may find it supports only 100 layers. Our comparison of broilers and layers for new farmers looks at the choice in full.
A finished broiler that is not sold goes on eating, something like 180 to 200 g of feed every day. A hundred unsold birds finish a 50 kg bag in two and a half days and gain little that the buyer will pay for. So the third limit is the number of birds you can sell within about a week to ten days of their reaching weight.
Do not estimate this. Count it. Before ordering chicks, speak to the people you expect to buy and write down names and numbers:
If three food sellers will take 15 birds each in your selling week and 40 households say yes, you have about 85 birds placed. Some who said yes will not buy, and others will hear about you and turn up, so a flock of 100 to 120 is reasonable. A flock of 500 on that list is not. Where to look for buyers, and how to get commitments in advance, is covered in our guide to finding buyers for broilers and eggs.
For layers the question is daily, not weekly. A hundred hens laying at 80% give 80 eggs a day, which is about 19 crates of 30 a week, every week, for a year or more. Find homes for those crates before the pullets start laying.
This is the limit people skip, because it cannot be measured with a tape. But brooding chicks is a skill learned with the hands and eyes, and nobody is good at it the first time. Reading whether chicks are too hot or too cold, noticing a drinker that has been empty for two hours, spotting the bird that is slightly off before it is dead: these come from doing, not from reading.
Time is the practical side. With manual feeders and drinkers, 100 to 300 birds take about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, plus a look at midday. That fits around a job if somebody reliable is at home. A thousand birds with the same manual equipment is a full day's work. Near market weight, broilers drink roughly twice the weight of the feed they eat, and more in hot weather. For 1,000 birds that is 400 litres or more a day, two full drums, carried by hand unless you have a tank and a tap at the house.
Be honest about three questions. Have you brooded chicks before? Will you be on the farm every day for the first two weeks? If not, has the person who will be there done it before? Three "no" answers mean your fourth limit is at the low end: 100 to 150 birds for a first batch.
It is tempting to think that a large flock is simply a small flock multiplied, so you may as well start big and earn properly. The trouble is that a first flock is going to contain mistakes, and the size of the flock sets the price of each one.
| The same beginner's mistake | With 200 broilers | With 2,000 broilers |
|---|---|---|
| A cold brooder kills 15% in the first week | 30 chicks lost | 300 chicks lost |
| Feed money runs short in week five | A few bags to borrow | Dozens of bags, on credit if anyone will give it |
| No buyers arranged at week seven | Sold to neighbours and one trader within days | Birds eating about eight bags a day while you search |
| Disease enters in week four | A painful lesson | Possibly the end of the business |
Beyond the cost of errors, a small flock is a better classroom for four reasons.
There is a floor as well as a ceiling. Below about 100 birds, fixed costs weigh heavily: one trip to collect chicks, a vaccine vial made for hundreds of doses, a bag of feed opened and going stale. And be realistic about income. A flock of 100 to 300 broilers will not pay a salary. Think of it as paid training, in which the birds cover their costs, leave something over and show you your true figures.
Take a new farmer who wants to raise broilers and has never brooded chicks. All figures here are examples.
| Limit | The working | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| Floor | Room of 4 m by 6 m is 24 square metres, at 8 birds per square metre | 192 birds |
| Feed money | GH₵ 14,000 less a one-fifth reserve is GH₵ 11,200, divided by GH₵ 62 per bird | 180 birds |
| Buyers | Two chop bars at 20 birds each, one caterer at 30, about 50 households | 120 birds, perhaps 150 |
| Experience | First batch, farmer present morning and evening, a relative at home in the day | 100 to 150 birds |
The smallest answers are buyers and experience, so the order is 150 chicks, which is three boxes of 50. The floor and the money could have carried more, and that is good: the spare floor means the birds will not be crowded in the last week, and the spare money is a cushion. A first batch with slack in it is far more likely to finish well than one stretched to every limit at once.
You can run your own prices through the poultry profit calculator to see what a batch of that size costs and returns.
Growth should be earned by results. A simple rule: move up only after two batches in a row have met all of these.
When you do move up, do not more than double. A typical path is 100 to 200, then 300 to 500, then 1,000. Each step changes the job as well as the number:
Scaling does not have to mean bigger batches. Raising the same 200 birds more often, with a proper clean and rest between batches, increases yearly output without raising the risk carried by any single flock. It also keeps your buyers supplied through the year, which they value more than one large delivery.
Chicks are packed in boxes, so round your number to a multiple of 50. At Halaal Farms Ghana the minimum order is one box of 50 chicks. Round down, not up, if rounding up would take you past your floor or feed limit. Do not add "extra to cover deaths" beyond what the space allows. Extra chicks that survive become crowding in week six.
Before you pay any hatchery, ask what vaccines the chicks will have had, what happens to chicks that arrive dead, and what the hatch date and delivery cost are. With us, chicks are vaccinated 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.
If you would like a second opinion on your four limits, send your house measurements, budget and location through the order form or call 024 915 1503. Advice is free, including when the honest answer is to start smaller than you had planned.
Yes. One box of 50 is a sensible start for a household flock or for slow, hardy birds such as Sasso, Kuroiler, cockerels or turkeys. For broilers or layers kept as a business, the cost per bird is high at 50 because transport, a vaccine vial and your time are spread over few birds. A hundred to 300 gives more realistic figures.
In an open-sided deep-litter house in Ghana's heat, plan for 8 to 10 broilers per square metre at market weight, so 100 birds need 10 to 12.5 square metres of clear floor. A room of 3 metres by 4 metres is enough. Chicks use only part of that in the first two weeks, but the house must fit them at full size.
They meet every first-time problem at full scale. A brooding error that kills 15 in a flock of 100 kills 300 in a flock of 2,000. Feed demand peaks in the final weeks when cash is lowest, and selling thousands of birds in one week needs buyers arranged long before. A small flock teaches the same lessons at a fraction of the cost.
Order the number your space, money and buyers support, and do not exceed your floor space to allow for losses. Good brooding should keep broiler mortality under about 5%. Ask the hatchery about its replacement policy before you pay. Halaal Farms Ghana replaces chicks that arrive dead free in the next hatch.
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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