Poultry Records Every Farmer Should Keep

A flock that is about to fall sick usually drinks less and eats less before you see a single bird hunched in a corner. You will only catch that if yesterday's figures are written down somewhere other than your memory. That is the first job of farm records: they turn "the birds look fine" into numbers you can compare from one day to the next, while a problem is still cheap to fix.

The second job is money. Feed is the largest running cost on any poultry farm, normally well over half of everything spent on a batch. If you cannot say how many bags went into a house and how many kilos of chicken or crates of eggs came out, you cannot say whether you made a profit or set a price with any confidence. The records below can all be kept with a pen and a hard-cover exercise book, and each comes with the sum that makes it useful.

One line a day: the house sheet

The core record is a single page for each house and each batch, with one line for every day the birds are on the farm. Start by writing the things that never change across the top: house name or number, breed, where the chicks came from, hatch date, date of arrival, number paid for, number counted on arrival and number dead on arrival. Add what the chicks were vaccinated with at the hatchery. If you buy from Halaal Farms Ghana, ask what the batch has had before it leaves, so this line is filled in on day one and your vet can plan the rest of the programme around it.

Then rule the page into columns. These are enough for any broiler, cockerel or pullet house:

For a laying house, add two more columns: eggs collected, and eggs cracked or dirty. Three rules keep the sheet trustworthy. Fill it in at the same time every day, because a figure taken at 6 a.m. one day and 4 p.m. the next cannot be compared. Write real counts, never estimates. Never leave a box empty: if nothing died, write 0, so the reader knows the count was done.

Mortality: count the dead, then turn it into a percentage

Walk the house first thing in the morning and again before dark, and pick up every dead bird. Write the number, and in the remarks column write what you noticed: a small weak chick, a big bird dead on its back, a swollen belly, blood in the droppings.

A raw count means little until it is set against flock size. Keep a running total and work out cumulative mortality:

Cumulative mortality (%) = total dead and culled so far ÷ birds placed × 100

If you placed 500 broiler chicks and have lost 6 by day seven, that is 6 ÷ 500 × 100 = 1.2%. Many farmers treat losses above about 1% in the first week as a signal to look hard at chick quality, the journey and the brooder, and aim to finish a broiler batch under 5%.

The pattern matters more than any single figure. Deaths that climb two days running, or that jump suddenly, are a reason to call a vet or the district veterinary office the same day and to take fresh dead birds and the house sheet with you. The sheet shows the vet the age, vaccination history and feed and water trend at a glance.

The first mortality entry is the arrival count. Count the chicks as you unpack the boxes and write down any that are dead. Halaal Farms replaces chicks that arrive dead free in the next hatch, so report the figure on the day of delivery while the boxes are still in front of you.

Feed and water: measure what goes in

Feed

Count feed in kilos, never in "scoops" or "some". The easy way is to weigh your bucket or scoop full of feed once, write its weight on the side with a marker, and then count buckets. Each evening, add it up and enter it on the house sheet. Then do one sum each week:

Feed per bird per day (grams) = kilos of feed given × 1,000 ÷ birds alive

A laying house of 950 hens that received 110 kg gives 110 × 1,000 ÷ 950 = 116 grams a hen. Commercial brown layers in full production commonly eat between 110 and 120 grams a day, and broilers eat more every week, so compare your figure with the guide for your breed and with your last batch. A sudden fall points to heat, a water fault, stale or mouldy feed, or the start of disease. A slow rise with no extra eggs or weight usually means feed is being spilled, eaten by rats and wild birds, or carried off the farm.

Keep a separate stock card in the feed store: date, bags received, bags issued to each house, balance. Once a week count the bags physically and compare the count with the card. It tells you when to reorder, and it is the simplest check against theft.

Water

Water is the record most small farms skip, and the one that warns you earliest. If you fill drinkers by hand, use a bucket of known size and count the buckets. If water comes by pipe from an overhead tank, a small water meter on the line into the house is cheap and takes ten seconds to read.

In mild weather birds drink roughly twice the weight of the feed they eat, so the 950 hens above would be expected to take somewhere around 200 to 250 litres, and more on a hot afternoon. What matters is knowing your own flock's normal figure, so that a change stands out. Water intake that falls for two days while the weather has not changed deserves an immediate check of the drinkers, the tank and the birds. Intake that shoots up while feed stays level usually means heat, a leaking line or too much salt in the feed.

Egg records for a laying flock

Write down each collection separately (morning, midday, afternoon), then the day's total, the number cracked and the number dirty or laid on the floor. The total feeds the main measure of a laying flock:

Hen-day production (%) = eggs collected today ÷ hens alive today × 100

If 950 hens give 779 eggs, production is 779 ÷ 950 × 100 = 82%. Work out the average for each week and mark it on a simple graph at the back of the book, with age in weeks along the bottom. A healthy flock climbs steeply, peaks, then declines slowly over many months. A sharp dip in that line is a question you must answer: a water outage, a feed change, a disease challenge, a lighting fault. Our guide to improving egg production rate explains the curve and what moves it.

The second number worth having is feed per crate:

Feed per crate (kg) = kilos of feed given ÷ crates collected

In Ghana a crate holds 30 eggs, so 779 eggs is just under 26 crates. With 110 kg of feed, that flock is using about 4.2 kg of feed for each crate. Multiply by your feed price per kilo and you have the feed cost inside every crate you sell, which is the starting point for a selling price.

Keep an egg store record too: crates brought in, crates sold, crates taken for the house or given out, eggs broken, balance. Count the store against the book every evening. Eggs are easy to carry and easy to sell, and a store that is counted daily stays honest.

Body weight: a weekly sample, written down

Feed figures tell you what went in. Weights tell you what the birds did with it. For broilers, weigh a sample on the same day each week, at the same time of day, and record the number of birds weighed, the total weight and the average. Set the average beside the breed's target for that age. A flock behind target for two weeks running needs action on feed quality, feeder space, stocking density or health. The method for taking a fair sample, and typical weekly targets, are in our article on broiler weight targets.

Weigh pullets being reared for laying as well, every week or two up to point of lay. Body weight and evenness at the start of lay strongly influence how well the flock peaks and how big the early eggs are. Note the date of every change of feed type beside the weights.

The health and vaccination log

Give health its own page at the back of each house book. Every vaccination gets a line:

The batch number and expiry date look like paperwork, but they matter. If a flock breaks with a disease it was vaccinated against, the vet will want to know which vial was used, whether it was in date and how it was given. A typical programme and the reasons behind each step are covered in the poultry vaccination schedule for Ghana.

Record every medicine in the same way: the product, the reason, who prescribed it, the first and last day of treatment, and the date on which the withdrawal period ends. That last date is the earliest day eggs or meat from the flock should be sold after treatment, as stated on the product label or by your vet. Write it in the book in red.

The money book: every cedi in and out

Use a separate book for money, split into three parts.

Expenses. Date, item, quantity, unit price, amount, who was paid, how it was paid (cash, or mobile money with the transaction ID), and which house or batch it was for. Group spending under a few headings so the totals mean something: chicks, feed, vaccines and medicines, litter, heat and electricity, water, labour, transport, repairs, other. Small items such as brooder charcoal, motorbike fuel and airtime belong here too.

Sales. Date, buyer, what was sold (live birds, dressed birds, crates of eggs, spent hens, manure, empty feed sacks), quantity, weight if sold by weight, unit price, amount, and whether it was paid in full. Birds and eggs eaten at home or given away go in this list too, at a price of zero, so that the stock figures still balance.

Debtors. One page for each customer who takes goods on credit: name, phone number, what was taken, the amount, the agreed payment date and each payment as it comes in.

Keep farm money apart from household money. A mobile money wallet or bank account used only for the farm gives you a statement that acts as a second record. Put receipts in one envelope per batch. Clean books are also what a rural bank, a microfinance officer or a prospective partner will ask to see.

Closing a batch: the one-page summary

When the last bird is sold, spend half an hour pulling the totals onto one page. The figures below are an example only, using a chick price of GH₵ 20 (broiler chicks are listed from GH₵ 20 on our day-old chick price list, and prices change) and an assumed feed price of GH₵ 420 for a 50 kg bag. Put your own numbers in their place.

Notice that cost is divided by birds sold, and never by chicks placed. The 22 birds that died still ate feed and still cost GH₵ 20 each, and the survivors have to carry that. Set total sales against total cost and you have the margin for the batch. After three or four such pages you will see which season, feed and chick source paid best. The sums behind the conversion figure are explained in feed conversion ratio explained, and you can test "what if" prices in the poultry profit calculator before you stock again.

For layers, do the same summary at the end of every month instead of waiting for the flock to be sold: hens alive, average hen-day percentage, crates produced, feed used, feed per crate, deaths, total cost and cost per crate.

Paper, wall chart or spreadsheet

The best system is the one that gets filled in every day by the person who does the feeding. On most farms that means paper in the house and something tidier at home.

• Hard-cover notebook. One per house. Rule a month of lines at a time so the worker only has to fill in boxes.
• Wall chart. A sheet of manila card by the door showing daily deaths and, for layers, daily eggs, so the trend is visible to everyone who enters.
• Spreadsheet. One tab per batch with the same columns as the notebook. Let formulas do the closing bird count, cumulative mortality, grams per bird and hen-day percentage. Phone spreadsheet apps work without a data connection.

A practical routine for an owner who is not on the farm every day: the worker fills in the book, photographs the page each evening and sends it by WhatsApp. The photographs are your backup if the book is rained on or lost. Once a week you type the numbers into the spreadsheet.

Whoever writes the records has to understand what they are for. Explain that a truthful "7 dead" helps the farm and a comforting "2 dead" harms it, and never punish a bad figure that was reported honestly. Then check from time to time: count one pen of birds, the bags in the store and the crates, and compare with the book. Linking part of a worker's bonus to recorded results is discussed in our guide to hiring and managing poultry farm workers.

Ten minutes a week: reading what you wrote

Records that are never read are only a diary. Pick one day a week, sit down with the books and look for changes. These patterns come up most often.

Two habits keep a record book alive past the first weeks of a batch. Keep the daily sheet short enough to fill in within five minutes, and never allow a week of figures to be written from memory on Sunday evening.

If you are planning your next batch and want help setting up the first page, Halaal Farms Ghana gives free advice to farmers before and after an order. Call 024 915 1503 or send the order form, and we will confirm the breed, hatch date, hatchery vaccinations and number of chicks so that your records start complete. The chick brooding guide sets out the temperatures and checks for the first weeks.

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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