A dry morning costs more than the water. Here is how to size a store, plan the pipes and count what a flock is worth.
Halaal Farms Ghana team20 May 2026 · 11 min read
Ask a poultry keeper about the worst morning of his year and the answer is seldom the feed. It is the water. The pump tripped in the night, or the compound tap ran dry until ten, or the tank was never topped up because the person whose job it was had gone to the market. By the time water comes back, the birds have been standing at empty drinkers for hours. A flock that goes without water for a long stretch takes time to settle back into eating and drinking the way it should.
This guide is about the supply behind the drinker: where the water comes from, how much you should hold in store, how it travels to the house, and what it costs you when it stops. It is written for a farm of a few hundred birds or more around Kasoa, where most keepers draw from one of four places: the piped supply, a borehole or well with a pump, rainwater from the roof, or water bought from a vendor with a tanker or drums. Most farms use two of these. The mix is where a sensible plan starts.
Most farms in our area draw from more than one place, and not every source is equally dependable. Take a sheet of paper, write each source down, and beside it note what happens to that source in three situations: when the power is off, in the middle of the dry season, and on a day the harmattan dust is thick enough to coat the roof sheets. Those answers show you the weak point before a bad morning does.
| Source | Still works when the power is off? | Usual weak point | Backup to plan for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Piped supply | Yes, if the line is running | Shut-offs for repairs, low pressure at certain hours | A stored tank that carries the flock through a shut-off |
| Borehole with pump | No, unless there is a generator or battery | Power, pump wear, dust in the filter | A gravity line or a second source |
| Rainwater tank | Yes, while the tank holds water | Empty in the dry months, dirty after the first rain | A piped supply or vendor for the dry season |
| Vendor or tanker | Yes, once it arrives | Arrival time and source of the water | A tested, known source and a note of each delivery |
A farm that depends on one source has a single point of failure. The question is not whether a source is good. The question is what you do on the day it stops.
The right size for a store comes from one question. If nothing comes into the tank tomorrow, how many days can the flock go on before it becomes a problem? Work the answer out on paper, then build to it. Do not start with the tank on sale at the hardware shop and then wonder how many days it covers.
The sum has four parts. Count your birds. Find the daily water need for the age you will have in the house, using the highest figure you expect across the cycle, because that is the figure that matters on a hot afternoon. Add the water you use for cleaning the house and washing the drinkers and the feed troughs. Then multiply the total by the number of days you want to cover.
The daily need is the number most keepers guess and few measure. It climbs as the birds grow, and it climbs again in heat. For the breed you are raising, confirm the figure with your vet or the feed company's guide, or ask us for the figure that matches the breed you bought. A number from a forum post about a different breed, in a different climate, is not a safe basis for buying a tank.
Here is the sum with placeholder figures, so you can see its shape. Suppose a house of 100 broilers needs a certain number of litres a day at mid-cycle, plus a margin for cleaning. Multiply that total by the days you chose. The answer is the litres you must hold in store, and it is the only figure that belongs painted on the tank wall. Replace the placeholders with your own confirmed figures before you buy anything.
Two things change the sum. The first is the season. In the hot months the birds drink more and the tank empties faster, so the same store covers fewer days. The second is how often you refill. A tank you fill once a week on a fixed day is a different plan from one that refills whenever the pipe happens to run. If your refills are irregular, hold a bigger store.
A tank is only useful if the water reaches the birds. Most supply trouble on a farm is in the pipes, the valves and the float, not in the tank itself. Sort those out first.
Keep one spare length of hose, two or three joiners and a spare float in the store. Water work is the one job where a few cedis of spare parts on a shelf can save a whole morning of walking to the shop.
Harmattan deserves a word here. The fine dust gets into open tanks and blocks filters faster than most keepers expect. Put the filter where you can reach it, and clean it on a fixed day rather than when the drinkers start to slow down.
Water is a small line in most budgets, so the store is easy to leave until last. A dry day shows what that choice costs. The figures below come from our fact pack and are illustrative. They are not a forecast for your farm, and you should confirm today's prices with us and with your suppliers before you use them.
A 50 kg bag of feed sells for broadly GH₵400 to GH₵470, depending on brand and season. A broiler takes about 4.2 kg of feed to reach market, so feed alone comes to roughly GH₵34 to GH₵39.50 for each bird that goes to market. Our day-old broiler chick is from GH₵20 each. Together, the chick and its feed come to about GH₵54 to GH₵59 per bird, before labour, housing and medicine.
Now the mortality. In our fact pack a well-managed flock loses about 3 to 5 per cent of its birds, and a poorly managed one loses 10 to 20 per cent. A day without water does not kill a flock in one go. But heat and thirst are among the things that push a flock from the first group toward the second, and that gap is what a store is protecting against.
Take a flock of 100 as an illustration. The gap between the two groups is 5 to 17 birds. At GH₵54 to GH₵59 each, that is somewhere between about GH₵270 and about GH₵1,000 of chicks and feed. Labour and medicine come on top. Set that against what a tank, a float and a few metres of pipe cost at your local hardware shop, and the sum is usually easy to make.
Storage is also where water goes off. An open tank collects leaves, dust and the odd lizard, and the walls grow a film you will see before you smell it. Keep the lid on. Keep the tank in shade so the water does not warm up in the afternoon sun. If the same tank is used for washing down the house, label it, so nobody fills a drinker line from the tank that was meant for cleaning.
Testing and recognising bad water is covered in our water quality guide, so we will not repeat it here. Read that before you decide what goes into the drinkers, especially if your source is a tanker or a well you have never tested.
A store that covers you in the rains may fall short in the dry season, and the harmattan brings its own problems. In the wet months the roof and the piped supply are often at their most generous. Keepers get careless then, and the store slips. Fill it anyway, check the float, and keep the gutters clear, because the first heavy rain after a dry spell carries the most dirt off the roof.
In the dry months, most farms lean harder on the borehole, the piped supply or a vendor, and the risk moves to whichever one you use least. Make a short calendar with the three months you are most worried about and write down which source you will use for each. Then test the backup once before you need it. A backup that has never been turned on is only a hope.
Harmattan days bring fine dust that settles on everything, and it works its way into floats, filters and the seals on lids. Wipe the tank rims, check the float, and give the filter a clean every week while the dust is heavy. It is a small job. It is also the kind of job that gets skipped on the busiest day of the year.
If your water reaches the house by pump, the pump is only as reliable as the power behind it. Work out whether you can run it from a generator, a solar set or a battery, and how long it would take you to get the generator going on a dark night. Keep the fuel in the store, not in the car. Test the changeover once, in daylight, so you know what you are doing before the night you need it.
If the flock depends on that pump every day, a gravity line from a raised tank is worth more than a bigger pump. Gravity does not care about the grid. For the wider question of power on the farm, read our notes on brooding through power cuts and on backup power for the incubator. The same thinking applies to the water.
There is no single number that suits every farm. Count the birds, find the daily need at each age from your vet or feed guide, add the water for cleaning, and multiply by the number of days you want to cover. That product is your figure.
In the rains, often yes. In the dry months most farms need a second source, such as a borehole, a piped supply or a vendor. Size the store for the dry season, not the wet one.
If the power is unreliable and the water comes from a pump, you need a plan for the outage. A generator, a battery or a raised gravity tank are all options. Choose whichever keeps the drinkers full through the night.
Treat it as untested until you know the source. Ask the vendor where the water was filled, keep a note of each delivery, and check it before it goes into the drinkers of very young chicks.
The best time to build a water store is before the first box of chicks comes off the truck. Once the house is full, every job takes twice as long and the birds are waiting. Walk the system with a pencil. Count the tanks, check the floats, mark the shut-offs, and do the sum for the number of days you want to cover. If the answer is bigger than your tank, you have found next month's job, not next week's crisis.
When you are ready, send the order form on our site or call us on 024 915 1503. An order starts with a message, not with money. Before you pay, we confirm three things with you: the price, the hatch date and the delivery cost. You can pay in cash, by mobile money or by bank transfer. If a chick arrives dead, we replace it free in the next hatch. Read our broiler day-old chicks page, check the current price list, and look at how much water a broiler flock drinks by age before you size your store.
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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