Most early losses start in the dark hours, when nobody is watching the heat, the water or the crowd. A short night round catches them.
Halaal Farms Ghana team14 September 2026 · 11 min read
Most keepers do their chick checks while the house is bright. They fill the feeders at seven, look in again around noon, and feel reasonably sure of the flock by the time the sun goes down. Then they go to bed. The trouble is that the hours after dark are when a brooder changes the most, and they are the hours nobody sees.
Losses in the early weeks usually start as small problems that grow quietly. Take a cold corner that stays cold, or a drinker that runs dry for two hours, or a few birds pushed out of the warm zone by the stronger ones. By morning, some chicks are dead or failing, and it is hard to say when it started. A night round is the only reliable way to find out.
A brooder at midday is a different place from the same brooder at two in the morning. The room cools faster than you expect, and in the harmattan the nights can turn cold and dry. Chicks answer the cold by huddling under the heat. A huddle that is a little too tight will smother the birds at its edge, and those are the ones you find first.
Heat sources drift too. A gas regulator that gave steady heat at six can run low by midnight. A bulb that was lit when you left may have blown while you slept. Water drops, feed runs down, and any gap in a wall that was harmless in daylight becomes a draught that finds the chicks. None of this is dramatic. It is slow, and by the time it is obvious, some birds have already paid for it.
Across Ghana, a well-managed flock commonly loses around 3–5% of its birds. Poor management can push losses to 10–20%. Most of the gap between those two figures is not one catastrophic mistake. It is a run of small things that nobody saw, and many of those small things happen overnight.
Every chick you lose in the first week has already cost you something. You have paid for the bird, the feed it ate, the vaccines it was given and the time you put in. Many of those losses came from something a short walk round the house would have caught at nine o'clock. The saving is not in the feed bin. It is in the flock you still have in week six.
A night round does not need to take long. It does need to happen at roughly the same times each night and in the same order, so that you notice what has changed. The keepers who do this well are rarely the ones with the most time. They are the ones with a routine they never skip. This is the round I would teach a new keeper.
Ghanaian keepers know the dark hours that come with power cuts, which most people call dumsor. If your brooder runs on electric heat, a cut means the heat stops, sometimes without warning and sometimes for longer than you planned. The plan you make in daylight matters more than the torch you grab in the dark.
Decide in advance what you will switch to, where the back-up lamp or fuel is kept, and who on the farm knows the plan. On a night round during a cut, the first job is the same as always: listen, then feel the warm zone. If the flock is spread across the heat and resting quietly, they are coping for now. If birds are crying out away from the heat or piling up at the edge, act at once. Our piece on brooding through power cuts goes into this in more detail.
Use this table as your reference for each night round. It does not replace your own eyes, but it gives you the same questions every night, so you can compare one night with the next.
| Check | Fine | Act tonight |
|---|---|---|
| Heat source | Steady, and the warm zone is in use | Flame low, bulb out, or chicks ignoring the heat |
| Chick spread | Birds across the warm area, resting | Piles at the edge, birds pressed to the guard |
| Sound | Steady, contented chirping | Sharp, rising peeping, or an unusual silence |
| Water | Every drinker full, dry litter around it | Empty drinker, or wet litter that could chill birds |
| Feed | Every feeder has feed and is reachable | Empty feeder, or birds at the back cannot reach it |
| Walls and gaps | Closed, with no draught across the floor | Open gap or door letting cold air in |
| Dead birds | None, or a few removed and recorded | Several together, or the same spot every night |
When you find dead birds in the morning, separate two questions. Were they dead when the box was opened, or did they die after? Chicks dead on arrival are replaced free in the next hatch. Deaths after arrival are the ones your night round is meant to catch, and they are the ones your notes will explain.
So write the notes as if someone else will read them. Put down the time you found the birds, the state of the heat at the last check, where the birds were lying, and what you changed. Ask us for the vaccine record for your batch as well, since we tell you what was given. A loss every night at the same corner tells you something that a single bad morning never will.
Here is how a bad night tends to look from the inside. This is an illustration, not a record from our farm. The house is quiet at ten. The heat is on, the feed is full, and the keeper goes to bed with a clear mind. Somewhere after midnight the gas drops, the flame sinks, and the warm zone shrinks to a patch the size of one corner. The chicks drift toward that patch and pile up. The birds on the outside cool off, stop eating, and sit with their wings slightly open.
Nothing dramatic happens that anyone would hear from the road. The flock simply sounds different. A keeper who does a round at eleven will probably hear it, and a keeper who does one at five will see the damage. The round at eleven is the one that saves birds. The round at five is the one that tells you what you missed.
That is why the timing matters as much as the checks. A house that is checked late enough to see the result, but early enough to act on it, is the one that keeps its losses low. Once you have a night that went wrong, keep the notes. The next time the same corner goes cold, you will know it is the same problem and not bad luck.
Most keepers do not skip a night round because they do not care. They skip it because they are tired, the rain has started, or the power has gone and they are not sure where the torch is. Make the round easy to do, and you will do it more often.
Not long. Once the order is set, most keepers can walk the whole house in a few minutes. The time is less important than the routine. Doing the same walk at the same times is what lets you notice a change.
One check at the end of the evening is rarely enough on its own. Heat and water change after midnight, so most keepers add a round in the small hours and another before first light. If you can only manage two, make them the late round and the early morning round.
Quiet can mean comfortable or cold. Check the spread and feel the warm zone again. If something still looks wrong, call us on 024 915 1503 and describe the sound, the heat and where the birds are sitting.
Chicks dead on arrival are replaced free in the next hatch. Losses after arrival are not covered by that rule, which is why your notes matter. Keep a record of each night so you can show what happened and when.
Yes. Keep a notebook for each batch and compare the first two weeks side by side. The patterns you see in one batch will tell you what to change before the next one arrives.
A good night routine starts before the chicks arrive, with the house, the heat, the water and the feed all ready. An order starts with a message, not with money. Send the order form on the site, call 024 915 1503, or email support@halaalfarmsghana.com. We confirm the price, the hatch date and the delivery cost before you pay, and you can pay by cash, mobile money or bank transfer once those are agreed.
If you are still deciding how to set up the house, read reading chick behaviour in the brooder and how much brooder space each chick needs. When you are ready to order, the ordering page sets out each step from the first message to delivery.
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 weekly weighing routine for broiler farmers: how to pick an honest sample, the weights to compare against from day 7 to day 42, the average and uniformity sums, and what to do when the flock is behind.
Feed cost per kilo of broiler depends on how much feed each kilo takes and what you pay for it. These ten habits lower both without starving the birds or buying additives.
Heat kills the heaviest broilers in the last days before sale. This guide explains why, shows the signs in order, and sets out the house, stocking, water and feeding changes that prevent it, plus an afternoon emergency plan.
