Work back from your sale date to the right hatch day for broilers, Sasso, cockerels, turkeys and guinea fowl, and book before the festive hatches fill.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 13 min read
A broiler you want to sell at seven weeks old on 19 December has to be in your brooder on 31 October. The egg it hatched from went into the incubator on 10 October. So when a farmer phones round in the first week of November looking for Christmas chicks, the chicks that could still make it were decided almost a month earlier, and most of them already have a name against them.
Festive poultry is a timing business. The birds are sold in a window of a few days, and a batch that is ten days late is worth a great deal less on 3 January than it was on 23 December. This guide shows how to count back from the sale day for each kind of bird, why the hatches fill up, and how early to put your name down.
There are only two lines of arithmetic, and the mistake most farmers make is to start from the wrong end.
Notice that the starting point is the first day you will sell, not the festival. Households buy live birds in the last few days before Christmas, with a second, smaller wave before New Year. Caterers, chop bars and people who sell dressed birds want theirs earlier, because slaughtering, cleaning and freezing take time. Companies buying birds as staff gifts often want delivery by the middle of December. Ask each buyer for a delivery day and plan to the earliest one.
The safety margin is there because growth charts assume everything goes right. One cold week in the brooder, a feed change that arrives late or a bout of disease can each cost several days. A bird that is ready a few days early can be held or sold dressed. A bird that is too small on 23 December cannot be fixed.
These are typical ranges under reasonable management in Ghana. The shorter figure assumes good chicks, good feed given freely and few setbacks. Your own records from earlier batches are a better guide than any table, so use them where you have them.
| Bird | Typical growing time to festive sale weight | Placement for a sale starting about 19 December |
|---|---|---|
| Broiler (Ross 308, Cobb 500) | 6 to 8 weeks | Late October to the first week of November |
| Sasso | 10 to 14 weeks on full feeding, longer if birds range for part of their feed | Mid-September to early October |
| Kuroiler and Noiler | 16 to 20 weeks for a heavy cock | August |
| White cockerels | 18 to 24 weeks | July to mid-August |
| Guinea fowl | 4 to 6 months, depending on strain and feeding | Late June to August |
| Turkey | 5 to 7 months, depending on type, sex and feeding | Late May to mid-July |
Two things stand out. The slow birds have to be on the farm in the middle of the year, in the rainy season, long before anyone is thinking about Christmas. And the broiler window is narrow: about two weeks in which nearly every broiler farmer in the country wants chicks.
Christmas buyers at the live market like a big bird, so most farmers aim for seven to eight weeks, not six. Count eight weeks back from your first sale day and place then. If the flock grows on target you will have heavy birds a few days early, which at Christmas is rarely a problem. For New Year sales, a second batch placed about nine or ten days after the first is right. The article on finding the most profitable day to sell broilers shows how to weigh extra feed against extra weight once the birds are near market size.
Coloured birds sell well at festivals to buyers who want firmer meat and a bird that looks like a local fowl but weighs more. Because they take three to five months, they tie up space and feed money for much longer than broilers. Decide by July whether you are raising them, and make sure the house they occupy is not the one you need for brooding broilers in late October. The breeds are described on our Sasso, Kuroiler and Noiler page.
Cockerels are cheap as chicks and slow to grow, so the whole plan depends on starting early and feeding economically. Chicks placed in July are a sensible target for December, and the same birds can be carried a little longer for buyers who want a mature cock. Feeding strategy and costs are covered in our guide to rearing cockerels for the festive market.
These are the birds people most often order too late. A turkey for the Christmas table commonly needs five to seven months, so poults go in between late May and mid-July. Guinea fowl need four to six months. Supply is the other limit: turkey poults and guinea keets are hatched in far smaller numbers than broiler chicks, and guinea fowl lay mainly in the rainy season, so keets are not available evenly through the year. Ask about them early in the year, not a month before you want them. See our keets, poults and quail page, and the full timeline in turkey farming from poult to Christmas table.
Christmas is the same date every year. The other three peaks are not, so each year's plan has to begin with a calendar.
Easter falls on a Sunday between 22 March and 25 April. Selling runs from the middle of Holy Week to Easter Saturday. In much of Ghana this is the hottest stretch of the year, and heavy broilers suffer in heat, so allow the full growing time and do not crowd the house to squeeze in extra birds.
Eid al-Fitr, at the end of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha each move about ten or eleven days earlier every year, and the final day depends on the sighting of the moon. Get the expected date from your mosque and treat it as a window of two or three days. Chicken is widely bought for the Eid al-Fitr feast. At Eid al-Adha the sacrifice itself is a sheep, goat or cow, so the poultry peak is smaller, though households still buy birds for hosting. Many Muslim customers prefer to buy live so that slaughter is done the halal way by someone they trust.
As an example of how these dates interact, take 2027. Easter Sunday is 28 March. Eid al-Fitr is expected around 9 or 10 March and Eid al-Adha around 16 or 17 May, both subject to the moon. That puts two selling peaks less than three weeks apart in March. A farmer serving both would place one broiler batch in mid-January and another in early February, and would be brooding in the harmattan, when nights are cold and dry and chicks need more heat. Sasso for the same sales would have to be placed between early December and mid-January, which means booking them while the hatchery is busiest with Christmas. Cockerels for that Easter needed to be on the farm by October or early November.
It helps to see the season from the hatchery's side, because it explains why money alone cannot produce chicks at short notice.
The result is that festive hatches are allocated in the order farmers book and confirm. Those who call late are offered a later hatch, a different breed or nothing. That is also the moment when people turn to an unknown seller on social media who claims to have plenty of chicks in the one week nobody else does. Be careful: scarcity is when chick fraud does best.
As a working rule, we suggest the following.
When you book, give the hatchery four facts: the bird, the number, your location and the first day you intend to sell. A hatchery that knows the sale day can tell you which hatch fits and whether your plan leaves a margin. At Halaal Farms Ghana the price, the hatch date and the delivery cost are confirmed before you pay, so you know exactly which day to have the brooder ready. Chick prices change, so check the current day-old chick price list and confirm the figure for your hatch when you book.
One large batch aimed at one day is the riskiest way to do a festive season. If brooding goes badly, or disease arrives in week four, the whole season is gone. Two or three smaller batches change the odds.
The cost is that you now have birds of different ages on one site, and older birds can pass disease to younger ones. Keep each age in its own house or a fully separated pen, with its own feeders and drinkers, and always attend to the youngest birds first. The reasoning is set out in our article on all-in, all-out batch planning. If you have a single small house, one batch with a generous margin is safer than two ages sharing the same air.
Here is the sum written out for a farmer who wants to sell 400 broilers, split into two batches of 200. The dates are an example. Put your own sale days in and count the same way.
| Step | Batch A (Christmas) | Batch B (New Year) |
|---|---|---|
| First sale day | 19 December | 28 December |
| Growing time allowed | 7 weeks plus 1 week margin | 7 weeks plus 1 week margin |
| Chicks in the brooder | 24 October | 2 November |
| Eggs set at the hatchery (21 days earlier) | 3 October | 12 October |
| Booking confirmed | Mid-September | Mid-September |
| Heaviest feed weeks | 5 to 19 December | 14 to 28 December |
Now read the table for its consequences. The brooding area must be empty, cleaned and rested before 24 October. Batch B needs its own brooding space on 2 November, because batch A will still be only nine days old. Feed money must stretch through three straight heavy weeks in December. And the last feed purchase should be made before the shops and mills close for the holiday. You can test the whole plan against your own chick, feed and selling prices with the poultry profit calculator.
Counting the weeks correctly is half the job. These are the other things that go wrong in a festive season.
Sometimes the count comes out wrong: the date has passed, or the hatch you needed is full. There are sensible options and some poor ones.
The poor options are buying from a seller you cannot verify because everyone reputable is sold out, crowding birds to make up numbers, and paying for products that promise faster growth. None of these recovers lost weeks.
Then fix next year now. Put two reminders in your phone: one in May to ask about turkey poults, keets and cockerels, and one on 1 September to book broilers. If you would like help with the count, send the order form or call 024 915 1503 with your sale date, and we will tell you which hatch of broiler chicks or other birds fits it.
For birds of about 2 kg or more, chicks placed in the first week of November reach a useful weight by 20 to 24 December if brooding and feeding go well. That leaves no margin for a slow week. Placing in the last week of October is safer. Chicks placed in mid-November are better aimed at New Year sales.
Chick numbers are fixed three weeks before hatch day, when the eggs are set, and the incubators hold only so many eggs. Nearly every farmer wants chicks in the same two or three weeks of late October and early November. Hatcheries allocate those hatches in the order bookings come in, so farmers who call late get a later date or none.
It is too late for a full-sized bird. Turkeys commonly need five to seven months to reach festive weights, depending on type, sex and feeding, so Christmas poults are normally placed between late May and mid-July. Poults bought in September are better planned for Easter or for the following Christmas as larger, older birds.
Eid dates move about ten or eleven days earlier each year and the final day depends on the sighting of the moon, so it can shift by a day. Ask your mosque for the expected date, plan to start selling three to five days before it, and count back from that first selling day instead of from the festival itself.
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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