Improving Local Chicken Production: Simple Steps That Double Survival

Take one local hen through a normal year. She lays about a dozen eggs, sits on them for three weeks and hatches ten chicks. Three months later she is walking the compound with three. She does this three times a year, so twelve months of work give the household nine growers, and some of those are lost before they are big enough to sell. Surveys of village flocks in Ghana and across Africa keep finding the same thing: half or more of all chicks die before they are eight weeks old.

Now change two numbers. If six or seven of each ten chicks survive, and if the hen goes back to laying early enough to manage a fourth clutch, the same hen produces about 26 growers a year. No new breed is needed for that, and very little money. It takes five habits, set out here in the order that gives the most birds for the least cost.

First, find out where your chicks go

Losses in a free-ranging flock are easy to accept because they happen one at a time and out of sight. For one month, write down every chick hatched and count the chicks each evening. When one is missing, note the likely cause. Most households find the same pattern.

• Predators. Hawks and kites by day, cats, rats and snakes by night, dogs at any time. Chicks under three weeks are the main victims.
• Disease. Newcastle disease sweeps through whole villages, usually in the dry season, and kills birds of every age. Fowl pox kills many young chicks in the wetter months.
• Cold and wet. A hen cannot cover ten growing chicks properly in a rainstorm, and a soaked chick is often dead by morning.
• Hunger. A chick's stomach is tiny and it must eat often. Following the hen for hours and competing with adults for scraps, the smallest chicks simply fade.
• Theft and accidents. Birds that roost in trees or under the eaves are easy to take, and chicks drown in open water containers and are crushed by vehicles.

Step 1: a house every bird sleeps in

The night house is first because the other steps depend on it. You cannot vaccinate birds that sleep in a mango tree, count birds that roost on three different roofs, or feed a supplement to birds that do not come home.

Two designs work well with local materials.

A raised coop on posts. A box of bamboo, split palm or off-cut boards standing about a metre off the ground on four posts, with a slatted floor so droppings fall through, and a ladder the birds climb at dusk. Fit a collar of flattened tin around each post so rats and snakes cannot climb, and pull the ladder away at night. This design stays dry, is easy to clean and suits 10 to 20 birds.

A ground-level house. Mud, block or wattle walls on a floor raised and rammed above the surrounding soil, a thatch or metal roof with a good overhang, and at least one large opening covered with wire mesh for air. This suits bigger flocks and can hold nests and a corner for hens with chicks.

Whichever you build, hold to these points:

• Allow about one square metre of floor for every eight adult local birds if they are inside only at night.
• Provide perches. Poles 3 to 4 cm thick, with about 15 cm of length per bird, keep birds off their droppings.
• Make the door close completely and fasten from outside.
• Clear droppings every week. They are good manure for the garden, and removing them takes away the place where mites and worm eggs build up.

Birds used to trees need training. Feed them inside the house every evening, and for the first few nights catch the stubborn ones after dark and put them in by hand.

Step 2: Newcastle vaccination on a fixed calendar

Newcastle disease is the reason many families say that "the chickens always die in the dry season". Birds twist their necks, pass green droppings, gasp and die within days, and a flock built up over a year can be gone in a week. There is no cure. There is a cheap and effective vaccine.

For village flocks the most practical form is given as a single drop in the eye. A heat-tolerant Newcastle vaccine known as I-2 was developed specifically for this use, since it survives village conditions better than ordinary vaccines, though it must still be kept cool, shaded and used promptly once opened. Other Newcastle vaccines such as LaSota are also widely used. Ask your district veterinary office or a trained community vaccinator which one is supplied in your area. They, not this article, set your programme.

The principles are the same everywhere:

• Repeat it. Protection fades and new chicks hatch constantly, so village flocks are commonly vaccinated every three to four months.
• Time one round before the harmattan. Outbreaks cluster in the dry season, so the flock should be freshly protected by about October or November.
• Vaccinate healthy birds only. Vaccine does not save a bird that is already infected, and vaccinating in the middle of an outbreak leads people to blame the vaccine for deaths it did not cause.
• Do the whole village together. A vial holds many doses, far more than one small flock needs, and it must be used the day it is opened. Sharing a vial among neighbours cuts the cost per bird to very little, and it leaves fewer unprotected flocks next door to keep the virus circulating.
• Catch birds from the house at dawn. This is where Step 1 pays for itself. Every bird is in one place, calm and easy to handle.

If birds start dying with the signs above, stop all movement: do not sell, give away or buy birds, and burn or deeply bury the dead instead of throwing them in the bush. Report it to the veterinary office. Our article on Newcastle disease in Ghana covers an outbreak step by step, and how to give poultry vaccines properly explains the eye-drop method.

Step 3: keep chicks under a basket for their first weeks

This is the step that changes chick survival fastest, and the tool already exists in most villages: the dome-shaped basket woven from cane, bamboo or palm ribs, about a metre across and half a metre high.

How to use it

1. Days 1 to 7. Keep the hen and her chicks together under the basket, or in a small covered pen, on dry ground in the shade. Put feed and a shallow water dish inside. Move the basket to clean ground every day.
2. Weeks 2 to 4. Let the hen out to forage for part of the day while the chicks stay under the basket with their feed and water. If the weave has gaps of about 4 cm, the chicks can slip out to her and back in to eat, while adult birds cannot reach their feed. A basket with a tighter weave keeps the chicks fully protected instead. Use that where hawks are bad.
3. Weeks 4 to 6. Let the chicks range near the house for longer each day, with feed still offered under the basket. Shut them in the night house with the others.
4. Every night. Hen and chicks sleep inside the house, in a box or a corner with dry bedding, never outside under the basket alone.

What to put in the dish

Chick starter from a feed shop is the easiest answer, and it costs less than people expect, because local chicks are small eaters. About 4 to 6 kg feeds a clutch of ten for the first four weeks. Where starter is hard to find, mix finely crushed maize or millet with pounded, unsalted dried fish at about three parts grain to one part fish, and add live termites whenever you can. Chicks fed whole grain alone grow slowly and weakly, since grain has too little protein for a growing body.

Give water in a shallow dish with a few stones in it, so chicks can drink without falling in, and refill it daily.

The second benefit: more clutches

Left alone, a hen stays with her chicks for two to three months and does not lay in that time. A full cycle of laying, sitting and rearing takes about four months, so she manages three clutches a year at best. If the chicks are feeding themselves under a basket, you can take the hen away from them at four to six weeks. She usually starts laying again within a few weeks, and the cycle shortens enough for a fourth clutch. More clutches, with more chicks surviving from each, is where the doubling in the title comes from.

Step 4: a small supplement, given every day

A local hen is good at finding food, but a compound holds only so much, and in the dry season it holds very little. A modest daily supplement keeps hens in laying condition and gives growers the protein that scavenging lacks.

• How much. A cupped handful of grain, about 30 to 50 grams, for each adult bird per day is a reasonable supplement. Give more in the harmattan and the weeks before harvest, when little is lying about. Give less straight after harvest.
• When. In the evening, inside or beside the night house. The birds come home full, on time, and you can count them.
• What. Maize, sorghum, millet or broken rice for energy. For protein add dried fish waste, groundnut cake, or cowpea and soya that have been roasted or boiled first.
• Shell. Keep crushed oyster or snail shell in a tin for the hens. Without calcium they lay thin-shelled eggs that break under the sitter.
• Who comes first. If there is not enough for all, feed the chicks first, then hens that are laying or about to sit. Idle cocks come last.

Trapping termites

Termites are free protein, and chicks grow visibly on them. A method long used in northern Ghana is to fill a clay pot or old calabash with damp straw, dry cow dung or old maize cobs, turn it upside down over a hole opened in a termite mound or run, and cover it against the sun. By the next morning termites have moved in to feed. Tip the contents out in front of the chicks.

Step 5: breed from your best, and bring in a better cock

Stop selling the wrong birds

When money is needed, the biggest cock and the fattest hen go to market, because they fetch the most. Year after year this leaves the smallest birds to produce the next generation, and the flock shrinks in size without anyone deciding it should. Reverse the habit:

• Mark your best hens with a coloured thread or ring on the leg: those that lay a dozen or more eggs per clutch, hatch most of them and bring most of the chicks to weaning. These hens are never sold.
• Sell or eat hens that lay few eggs, abandon nests, break eggs or lose their chicks, and hens past their third or fourth year.
• Keep the fastest-growing young cock as the next breeder and sell the others as soon as they reach size, before they eat more supplement.
• Keep one cock for about ten hens.

Change the cock

A cock that stays for years ends up mating with his daughters and granddaughters. Inbreeding shows as fewer eggs hatching, weak chicks and smaller birds. Replace the breeding cock every year or two with one from a different village, or swap with a farmer some distance away.

Use an improved cock

The quickest way to add size and eggs is to put an improved cock over local hens. Sasso, Kuroiler, Noiler, Plymouth Rock and Australorp cocks are all used this way. The crossbred chicks grow noticeably bigger than pure local birds, and the crossbred daughters lay more. To make it work:

• Remove the local cocks first. They are lighter and more agile than the newcomer, and if they stay they will father most of the chicks.
• Feed the improved cock. He weighs twice what a local cock weighs and loses condition quickly on scavenging alone.
• Vaccinate him and keep him apart for two weeks before he joins the flock.
• Keep some pure local hens. Crossbred daughters often sit less readily than their mothers, and you still need dependable sitters.
• Do not let him breed his own daughters. After a year, exchange him with a neighbour who has done the same.

The cheapest way to obtain breeding cocks is to rear them from day-old. Halaal Farms supplies Sasso, Kuroiler and Noiler chicks (Kuroiler and Noiler from GH₵ 11 and Sasso from GH₵ 13 when checked on 2 October 2026; see the price list for current figures). The minimum order is a box of 50, which suits a farmers' group: brood the box together following our chick brooding guide, share out the best cocks at five months and sell or eat the rest. Managing these breeds as a flock in their own right is covered in Kuroiler and Noiler chickens for village and backyard farmers.

Getting more chicks out of each sitting

A hen that hatches six from twelve eggs has wasted half of three weeks' sitting. Small attention to the nest raises the hatch.

• Give her a proper nest. A basket or box in a quiet, dim corner of the house, lined with dry grass over a layer of wood ash to keep mites off her.
• Set fresh eggs. Use eggs laid within the last week or so, clean and uncracked, and no more than she can cover fully, usually 10 to 12.
• Feed and water within reach. A sitting hen leaves the nest once a day. If grain and water are close she returns before the eggs chill.
• Check the eggs. After a week, hold each egg against a torch in a dark room. A fertile egg shows a dark spot with fine veins. A clear egg is infertile and should come out before it rots. See candling eggs for what to look for.
• Set two hens together. If two hens go broody in the same week, their chicks hatch together and can share one basket, one bag of starter and one vaccination day.

The smaller killers: pox, fleas, lice and worms

Fowl pox causes wart-like scabs on the comb, face and eyelids. In chicks, the scabs can seal the eyes so the bird cannot find food. It spreads by mosquitoes and contact, mostly in the rains. A single vaccination, given by a stab through the wing web, protects for a long time. Ask the vaccinator about it when Newcastle rounds are planned.

Sticktight fleas cluster in dark patches around the eyes and comb, and heavy loads kill young chicks. Lice and mites drive hens off their nests, and worms take a share of the little feed a scavenging bird finds. Clean the house, renew the ash and ask a veterinary officer about safe treatments. More detail is in our guide to worms, lice and mites.

A simple calendar for the village flock

Adjust the months to your area. The south has two rainy seasons and the north has one, and the veterinary officer's vaccination dates take priority over this table.

If you can only do one thing this month

Build the house and start the evening feed, because both cost almost nothing and make every later step possible. Next, join or organise a Newcastle vaccination round. Then put the next clutch that hatches under a basket with a kilo or two of starter, and count how many chicks reach six weeks compared with the clutch before.

If you would like help choosing an improved cock, or you want a box of chicks for a group, send the order form or call Halaal Farms Ghana on 024 915 1503. We deliver to all 16 regions, confirm the price and hatch date before you pay, and advice is free whether or not you order.

Questions farmers ask

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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