How to calculate hen-day production, compare your laying curve with the breed guide and work through the management levers that lift egg output in Ghana.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 14 min read
A flock of 1,000 hens that gives 26 crates a day and a flock of 1,000 that gives 29 crates eat almost the same amount of feed. The three extra crates are 90 eggs, or nine points of laying percentage, and most of their value is margin because the feed bill has already been paid. That is why the laying percentage is the first number a layer farmer should know each morning, ahead of the price of maize and the price of eggs.
What follows is how to calculate the figure correctly, what a healthy curve looks like, and which management changes move it most, set out in order of impact.
Hen-day production is the number of eggs laid in a day, divided by the number of hens alive that day, multiplied by 100. If 996 hens are alive this morning and you collect 850 eggs between the first round and the last, the flock laid at 85.3%.
A single day's figure jumps about, because some eggs are laid late and picked up the next morning. A weekly figure is steadier. Add up the eggs for seven days and divide by the sum of the hens alive on each of those days.
| Day | Hens alive | Eggs collected |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 998 | 852 |
| Tuesday | 998 | 846 |
| Wednesday | 997 | 861 |
| Thursday | 997 | 838 |
| Friday | 996 | 850 |
| Saturday | 996 | 844 |
| Sunday | 995 | 857 |
| Week | 6,977 hen-days | 5,948 eggs |
5,948 eggs divided by 6,977 hen-days is 85.3% for the week. Plot that one figure each week on squared paper or in a spreadsheet and you have your laying curve.
Hen-housed production divides the eggs by the number of hens you put in the house at the start of lay, whatever has died or been culled since. If the flock above began with 1,040 pullets, its hen-housed figure for the week is 81.7%, because the average of 850 eggs a day is set against 1,040 birds and not 997. Hen-day tells you how well the living birds are laying. Hen-housed tells you how well the whole investment is doing, since it charges you for every bird lost. Keep both.
Modern hybrids such as Hy-Line, Lohmann and Bovans all follow the same shape. The first eggs appear at about 18 to 19 weeks, the flock climbs steeply for six to eight weeks, holds a peak, then declines slowly until the hens are sold. The breeding companies publish a week-by-week target for each strain. The table gives the approximate pattern for brown layers. Ask your chick supplier for the guide for your own breed and use its figures in place of these.
| Age of flock | Typical hen-day production in breed guides |
|---|---|
| 18 to 19 weeks | First eggs, under 10% |
| 20 to 21 weeks | About 50% |
| 26 to 30 weeks | Peak, 93 to 96% |
| 40 weeks | 91 to 94% |
| 60 weeks | 86 to 90% |
| 72 weeks | 80 to 86% |
| 80 weeks | 76 to 82% |
The figures in the table are targets from birds in controlled houses on well-made feed. In an open-sided deep-litter or cage house in Ghana, with afternoon temperatures above 30°C for much of the year, a well-managed flock commonly runs a few points under the guide. Being three or four points below at peak is ordinary. Being ten points below means something in the list further down is wrong. Feed intake has to rise week by week through the climb, because the peak is the highest demand for protein, energy and calcium in the hen's life.
Two features of the curve matter more than the height of the peak. The first is how many weeks the flock stays within a few points of that peak. The second is the slope afterwards. A sound flock loses roughly a quarter to half a percentage point a week once it is past peak. A flock losing one or two points a week is telling you about feed, heat, parasites or disease.
Once you have ten or more weekly points on paper, the shape itself points to the cause.
| Pattern | Most likely causes |
|---|---|
| Slow climb, more than nine weeks from first egg to peak | Uneven or underweight pullets, so that the flock comes into lay in ones and twos. |
| Low, flat peak | Pullets light at housing, feed intake too low for the weather, or a feed short of protein and energy. |
| Good peak that sags after four to six weeks | Hens losing body weight because intake did not keep up with egg output. Often a late change from grower to layer feed, or hot weather arriving at peak. |
| Drop of five points or more within a few days | Water failure, a new batch or brand of feed, lights failing, a fright, or disease. |
| Saw-tooth, up and down from day to day | Irregular collection times, a timer drifting after power cuts, drinkers running dry on some afternoons, or eggs leaving the farm uncounted. |
| Steady decline faster than half a point a week | Worms, mites, months of heat, poor shells leading to breakages, or non-layers building up in an ageing flock. |
A sudden fall is an emergency with its own order of checks, set out in why your layers have stopped laying and what to check. The rest of this guide deals with the slower work of lifting a flock that is laying, but below what it should.
Before you spend money on a fix, put a value on the gain. Use your own prices. The figures below are examples only, chosen to make the arithmetic easy.
On those figures, the hen must lay 0.46 of an egg a day to pay for her feed alone, so 46% is the feed-only break-even. Feed is usually the largest share of the running cost but not all of it. If feed were 70% of your daily cost, the full cost per hen would be about GH₵ 1.31 a day and the break-even would be close to 66%. Work out your own break-even this way. It is the level near which an old flock should be sold.
Now the gain. One percentage point on 1,000 hens is 10 eggs a day, 300 eggs a month, 10 crates. At the example price that is GH₵ 600 a month for each point, with no extra feed. A second useful figure is feed per crate. A thousand hens eating 115 kg a day and laying at 85% produce 28.3 crates, so each crate has cost 4.1 kg of feed. At 75% the same feed produces 25 crates, at 4.6 kg each. You can test the effect of your own prices and percentages in the poultry profit calculator.
The height of the peak and the weeks it lasts are largely decided before the first egg. Pullets that reach the breed's target weight on time (around 1.5 kg at 18 weeks for most brown strains, but check the guide), with at least 80% of the birds within 10% of the average, come into lay together and climb fast. Light birds start late, lay small eggs and fade early.
If you rear your own, weigh a sample every week and feed to the weight target, as described in our guide to rearing pullets from day-old to point of lay. If the flock is already in the laying house and light, do two things: keep a nutrient-dense feed in front of the birds, and hold back the increase in day length until the average weight reaches the target. Stimulating a light pullet with extra hours of light forces her into lay on a body that cannot sustain it.
Halaal Farms Ghana supplies Hy-Line, Lohmann and Bovans layer chicks vaccinated at the hatchery, and point-of-lay pullets. Whoever you buy from, ask what the batch has been vaccinated against and, for point-of-lay birds, ask for the weights and the lighting history.
A hen does not lay on the percentage of protein printed on the bag. She lays on the grams of protein, energy and calcium she swallows each day. A brown hybrid at peak typically needs about 110 to 120 grams of a layer feed carrying roughly 16 to 18% crude protein and 3.5 to 4.2% calcium. If heat pulls her intake down to 95 grams, she is getting close to a fifth less of everything, and production follows within a week or two. Egg size usually slips first, then egg numbers.
So measure intake. Weigh the feed that goes into the house each day, divide by the hens alive, and write it beside the laying percentage. Then work on the following.
An egg is about two-thirds water, and a laying hen drinks roughly twice the weight of her feed: around 200 to 250 ml a day in mild weather and a good deal more on a hot afternoon. Hens that cannot drink will not eat, so every water fault shows up as a feed fault and then as missing eggs. A flock left dry for most of a day can take a week or longer to recover.
Check the far end of every drinker line as well as the end nearest the tank. Check that the tank still holds water at 3 pm, when demand is highest. Shade the tank and bury or cover exposed pipes, because hens drink less of water that has been heated by the sun. If your supply depends on an electric pump, keep at least a day's reserve in an overhead tank for power cuts.
The hen's reproductive system responds to the length of the day. Natural daylight in Ghana stays close to 12 hours all year, which is short of what a hybrid layer needs for full production. Most programmes add light in steps from the start of lay until the birds have 14 to 16 hours, then hold that length to the end. The one rule with no exceptions is that the day must never get shorter while the flock is laying.
In practice the losses come from small failures: blown or dusty bulbs, a timer that has drifted after outages, a caretaker who switches off early to save power. Walk the house after dark once a week. You should be able to read newsprint at feeder level everywhere. Keep rechargeable or solar lamps ready for outages. The full programme is in our article on lighting programmes for chicks and growing pullets.
Laying hens are most comfortable somewhere between 18 and 24°C. Above about 30°C they pant, eat less and lay smaller eggs with thinner shells. You cannot air-condition an open house, but you can reduce the load: keep the stocking density moderate, clear bush and stacked materials that block the wind, and paint the roof white or fit a ceiling of mats under it. Some farmers give one to two hours of light in the middle of the night so that hens can eat and drink when it is coolest. If you try this, keep it at the same hour every night and leave at least three hours of darkness on either side.
The vaccination programme carried out in rearing sets the flock's protection, and your vet may advise boosters in lay against diseases such as Newcastle disease and infectious bronchitis, both of which cut production and damage shells. Record every date.
Parasites take eggs quietly. Roundworms and tapeworms share the hen's feed. Red mites hide in cracks by day and feed on the birds at night, leaving them pale and restless. Go into the house with a torch after dark and look at perches, cage joints and under the vent feathers. If hens are coughing, have swollen faces, pass abnormal droppings or die in numbers, call a vet before you buy any medicine. Antibiotics given on a guess may leave residues in eggs and do nothing for viral disease or worms.
Part of a low percentage is often not a laying problem at all. The eggs were laid and then lost.
From about 30 weeks onwards, every flock carries some hens that have stopped laying or never started. Each one eats a full ration. Removing them raises the percentage by simple arithmetic: 1,000 hens laying 820 eggs are at 82%, and the same 820 eggs from 960 hens are at 85.4%. The real gain is the feed. Forty non-layers eating 115 grams each consume about 4.6 kg a day, close to 140 kg a month, for nothing.
The hands-on checks of comb, vent, pubic bones and abdomen are explained step by step in how to identify and cull hens that are not laying.
When production is low, the temptation is to change the feed, add a vitamin, deworm and extend the lights all in the same week. If the figure then moves, you do not know what caused it. Make one change, mark the date on the curve, and judge it on the next two weekly figures.
A short weekly review keeps the gains you make. On the same day each week, look at five numbers together:
If you are planning a new flock, or your present one is stuck below its curve, call Halaal Farms Ghana on 024 915 1503 or send the order form with your flock's age, breed, bird count and daily egg count. Advice is free before and after an order, and we confirm price, hatch date and delivery cost for chicks before you pay. Current starting prices are on the day-old chick price list.
Breed guides for brown hybrids show a peak of 93 to 96% and about 80 to 86% at 72 weeks, in controlled houses. In open-sided houses in Ghana's heat, a well-run flock usually sits a few points below those targets. Treat a peak in the high 80s or low 90s as good, and investigate if you are ten points or more under the guide for the flock's age.
Multiply the hens alive by the laying percentage. At 85%, 500 hens give 425 eggs, a little over 14 crates of 30. At 75% the same flock gives 375 eggs, or 12.5 crates. The feed eaten is almost the same in both cases, which is why the percentage matters so much to your margin.
A vitamin or mineral supplement helps only when the flock is short of that nutrient, for example after a stress, in very hot weather or when feed has been stored too long. It cannot replace a properly formulated layer feed, enough water, 14 to 16 hours of light and healthy birds. Fix those first, then ask a vet or nutritionist whether a supplement is justified.
It depends on the cause. A short water or feed interruption usually recovers in one to two weeks. A lighting fault or a spell of low feed intake can take two to four weeks. Disease damage to the oviduct, or hens pushed into a moult, may never fully return to the old level. Judge any change on at least two weekly figures.
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.
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.
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.
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.
