Sasso Chicken Farming: Management, Feeding and Returns

A Sasso cockerel on full feed weighs about 2 kg at 10 to 12 weeks. A Ross or Cobb broiler passes that weight at five to six weeks, and many village cocks never reach it at all. The Sasso sits between the two, and nearly every decision in rearing it (how you house it, what you feed it, when you sell it and to whom) follows from that position. Treat it like a broiler and you pay broiler feed bills for twice as long. Treat it like a village fowl and it stays thin, because a bird bred to grow needs more than it can scratch from a compound.

What kind of bird a Sasso is

Sasso is the name of a French breeding company and of the coloured chickens it produces. The birds were developed for slow-growth, free-range meat production, the kind of chicken that walks outside, takes longer to mature and has firmer, more flavoured meat than a white broiler. The types sold in West Africa are usually described as dual-purpose: the males are reared for meat and the females can be kept on to lay.

Three things about the bird matter to you as a farmer.

• It is a hybrid. The chicks you buy come from crossing separate parent lines held by the breeder. They grow evenly and perform well, but their own offspring will be mixed in size and colour. A Sasso flock is something you buy in, batch by batch, not something you multiply at home.
• It is coloured. Most are red-brown, some are barred, black-tailed or mixed, and some strains have a naked neck. To a buyer in a live-bird market the bird looks like a very large, well-fed local fowl, and that is the heart of its market value.
• It is built to move. Stronger legs, a slower growth curve and a smaller breast than a broiler mean far fewer leg failures, less ascites and less sudden death. The bird copes with heat better and can use a run properly.

Sasso leans towards meat and reaches table weight sooner than the other coloured hybrids. If your plan is a village flock that mostly feeds itself, read about Kuroiler and Noiler chickens for backyard farmers before you choose.

Growth timeline: what to expect and when

How fast a Sasso grows depends almost entirely on how much balanced feed it receives. The table gives guide figures for two systems, as averages for a mixed flock. Cockerels run 15 to 25 per cent heavier than pullets from about eight weeks. Strains differ, so weigh your own birds.

So "Sasso takes three months" and "Sasso takes five months" are both true. The farmer who quoted three months fed a complete ration all day. The one who said five gave a handful morning and evening. Decide which system you are running before you count back from your sale date.

Weigh ten birds (five of each sex once you can tell them apart) every two weeks, in the cool of the morning before feeding. Hang each bird in a small sack from a spring scale. If the average falls more than about 10 per cent behind the column you are aiming for, look at feed quantity first, then worms, then coccidiosis.

The first four weeks are ordinary brooding

A hardy adult starts as a fragile chick. For the first three to four weeks a Sasso needs the same brooding as a broiler: a draught-free ring, dry litter about 5 cm deep, a floor temperature near 32 to 33°C in the first days that you lower step by step, and water and chick starter within reach from the first hour. Our chick brooding guide gives the temperatures and space week by week.

The point specific to Sasso is this: do not let chicks outside early because "they are free-range birds". Before they are fully feathered, at about four weeks, they chill in morning dew, get soaked in a shower and are the right size for a hawk, a cat or a rat. In the rainy season keep them in until five weeks.

Chicks from Halaal Farms are vaccinated at the hatchery before they leave. Ask us what your batch has had, write it down, and take that note to your vet so the on-farm programme starts from the right place.

Setting up the semi-intensive system

Semi-intensive means a secure house for the night and bad weather, plus a fenced run for the day. It suits Sasso better than full confinement or full freedom. Locked in all day, the bird costs more to produce than a broiler. Left to wander, it gets stolen, infected by village flocks and underfed.

The house

Use the same open-sided deep-litter design you would build for broilers: long axis running east to west so the sun passes over the ridge, a low wall of about 60 cm with wire mesh above, a wide roof overhang against driving rain, and a floor raised above the surrounding ground. Allow about 6 to 8 grown Sasso per square metre of floor. A house of 5 m by 8 m therefore holds 250 to 300 birds comfortably. Do not stock tighter on the grounds that the birds spend the day outside. In the rainy season they will be shut in for whole days, and the litter must cope.

Add perches from week five: smooth poles 4 to 5 cm thick, 40 to 60 cm off the floor, with roughly 15 to 20 cm of perch per bird. Sasso like to roost, the perches keep them off damp litter at night, and the breast feathers stay cleaner for sale.

The run

• Size. Give at least 1 square metre of run per bird, and 2 or more if you want grass to survive. Below that the ground turns to bare earth within weeks.
• Fence. Wire mesh or netting about 1.8 m high. Sasso are heavy and fly poorly, but young birds will clear a low fence. Bury the bottom edge or lay stones along it to slow down dogs and digging predators.
• Shade. Trees, plantain, or a simple thatch shelter. Birds will not use a run that has no shade after ten in the morning, and you lose the benefit you built it for.
• Two paddocks if you can. Split the run in half and swap every three to four weeks. Resting ground lets grass recover and lets sunlight break the build-up of worm eggs and coccidia.
• Drainage. Fill any hollow that holds water. Birds drink from puddles, and puddles in a chicken run are a soup of droppings.

Open the pop-hole after the morning feed, once the dew is off the grass, and close it at dusk after the evening feed. Keep feeders and drinkers inside so wild birds are not invited to share them, and count the birds in every evening.

A feeding strategy that fits a slower bird

Weeks 0 to 4: do not economise

Feed a good chick or broiler starter (roughly 20 to 22 per cent crude protein) freely. The skeleton, gut and immune system are laid down now. A chick stunted in the first month never catches up, whatever you feed later, and the saving on starter is tiny because chicks eat so little: about 700 to 900 grams each over the four weeks.

Week 5 to sale: three ways to feed

Full feed. Grower mash or pellets of about 17 to 19 per cent protein, available all day, with the run as a bonus. This gives the fastest growth and the 10 to 12 week sale. As a planning figure, allow 6 to 7 kg of feed per bird to 12 weeks, which works out at around 3 kg of feed for each kilo of live weight. You do not need high-density broiler finisher. The Sasso cannot convert it into growth at the speed a broiler does, so the extra cost is wasted.

Measured ration plus range. Give about two thirds of what the birds would eat freely, split into a morning feed before they go out and a larger evening feed that calls them home. The run and your own supplements supply the rest. Growth is slower, bought feed per bird is lower, and the meat is firmer. This is the system most small farms mean by semi-intensive.

Home-mixed or diluted feed. Some farmers stretch commercial feed with maize bran, wheat bran or palm kernel cake. This can work from about eight weeks, but understand what it does: bran dilutes protein and energy together. If you cut a grower feed half and half with maize bran, the mix drops to roughly 13 or 14 per cent protein and growth slows sharply. Dilute by no more than about a quarter unless you add a protein source such as soya meal or fishmeal to balance it. Our guide to starter, grower and finisher feeds explains what each bag is formulated to do.

What the run really contributes

Grass, weeds, seeds and insects add vitamins, pigment for yellow skin and shanks, and some protein. They add very little energy. A growing bird that needs 100 grams or more of balanced feed a day cannot find that in a fenced paddock, however green. Count the run as a saving of perhaps 10 to 20 per cent of the feed bill, and as a benefit to health and meat quality, not as free feed.

Cheap supplements worth adding: chopped moringa, sweet potato and pawpaw leaves, fresh vegetable trimmings from the kitchen or market (never rotten), termites, and black soldier fly larvae if you produce them. Hang greens in bunches at head height so they are not trampled into the litter.

Health when birds go outside

Sasso have fewer metabolic problems than broilers, but a run brings its own risks and the birds live long enough to meet them.

• Newcastle disease. One early vaccination does not protect a bird for 16 weeks. A typical programme gives Gumboro and Newcastle vaccines in the first four weeks and Newcastle boosters after that. Your vet sets the timing. See our vaccination schedules for Ghana for common examples.
• Fowl pox. Spread by mosquitoes and by contact, and common in the rainy season. Broilers are usually sold before it matters. Sasso are not, and pox scabs on the comb and face ruin the look of a bird you intend to sell alive. Vaccination by wing-web stab at around six to eight weeks is common practice.
• Coccidiosis. Wet litter near the pop-hole and muddy patches in the run are where it starts. Watch for hunched birds and blood-stained or brownish, loose droppings between three and eight weeks.
• Worms. Birds on soil pick up roundworms and tapeworms. Slow growth with a good appetite is the usual sign. Ask your vet about a deworming routine and observe any withdrawal period before sale.
• Contact with other poultry. A fence does not keep out doves or a neighbour's wandering hens. Do not keep local chickens loose around the Sasso house, and never return unsold birds from the market to the flock.

A sudden rise in deaths, twisted necks, green diarrhoea or gasping needs a vet or the district veterinary office the same day.

Keeping the hens for eggs

If you hold back the pullets, expect the first eggs at about five to six months. The eggs are brown or tinted and medium in size at first. A well-fed Sasso hen lays far more than a local hen, but noticeably fewer eggs than a commercial brown layer, and she eats more because she is a heavier bird. For a business built on egg sales, proper layer chicks are the better choice. For a household or a mixed farm that wants meat from the cocks and a steady supply of eggs from the hens, Sasso does the job well.

Move the hens to layer feed when the first eggs appear, provide one nest box for every four or five hens, and keep them on a measured ration. A heavy breed on unlimited feed gets fat and lays poorly.

Who buys coloured birds, and how they judge them

The Sasso's market is the buyer who wants "hard" chicken: meat that holds together in light soup or a long-cooked stew and has more taste than a six-week broiler. That buyer is usually found at the live-bird market or buying direct from a farm.

Know how the sale works before you rear the bird:

• Sold per bird, by eye. Traders lift the bird, feel the breast and thigh, look at the size of the frame and name a price. A tall cock with full plumage and a bright comb fetches more than its weight alone would suggest. A bird with broken feathers, a dirty breast or pox scabs fetches less.
• Cocks carry a premium. Large coloured cocks are wanted at Christmas, Easter and the two Eids, for gifts and for family meals. Some buyers ask for particular plumage colours for customary purposes.
• Hens sell differently. Sasso pullets sell as meat at a lower price than cocks, or at a better price as point-of-lay birds to households that want eggs.
• Dressed sales are harder. Sold by the kilo next to a frozen broiler, a Sasso looks expensive, with a narrower breast and a higher production cost. If you dress birds, sell them as a named product (free-range or "local-type" chicken) to buyers who value that, such as restaurants serving traditional soups.

Because festive demand is where coloured cocks earn most, timing matters. Our article on when to order chicks for Christmas, Easter and Eid shows how to count back from the sale week, and the guide to finding buyers for your birds covers the channels in detail.

Working out returns with your own prices

Prices in Ghana move too fast for a printed profit figure to stay true, so run the sum yourself before you stock. Here is the method with example figures. Replace every one with your own.

Two lessons come out of the example. First, the slower system does not automatically cost less. The bird eats less each day but for six more weeks, and a living bird uses feed just to maintain its body. The saving comes only if a real share of the ration is replaced by cheap supplements and forage. Second, the figure that decides the result is the price per bird your market pays in the week you sell. Call three traders, ask what they pay today for a 2 kg coloured cock and for a hen, then subtract your cost per bird sold, labour and transport.

The chick price above is a starting price and changes, so check the current day-old chick price list, and use the poultry profit calculator to test different feed prices, mortality and sale prices before you commit.

Three habits that eat the margin

• Holding birds with no sale date. After about 14 weeks on full feed, a Sasso needs 4 kg of feed or more for each extra kilo gained. Every week past the planned sale is paid for at that rate.
• Too few feeders for a measured ration. When feed is limited, every bird must be able to eat at the same moment, or the strong take double and the weak fall behind.
• Selling cocks and hens at one price. Sort them. Sell the heavy cocks first into festive demand and price the hens separately.

Ordering Sasso chicks

Halaal Farms Ghana supplies Sasso day-old chicks from Opeikuma, Kasoa, with delivery to all 16 regions. The minimum order is one box of 50, and the price, hatch date and delivery cost are confirmed before you pay. If you are unsure whether Sasso, Kuroiler, Noiler or cockerels fit your market and your space, send the order form or call 024 915 1503 and tell us your sale date and how you plan to feed. Advice is free, before and after 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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