The Best Age to Sell Broilers in Ghana

For most Ghanaian broiler farmers the best age to sell is a window of about five to seven weeks (35–49 days), and the exact day inside that window is a business decision, not a growth one: you sell when the extra weight a bird still gains is no longer worth the extra feed it costs to add it. Because feed conversion gets worse every week — a Ross 308 needs far more feed to add its last kilo than its first — the temptation to "grow them a bit bigger" quietly erodes your margin. The right answer depends on your market: a live-weight sale into the Christmas rush rewards a heavier bird, while a routine dressed-chicken order may pay best at a lighter, more efficient weight. This guide shows how to weigh worsening FCR against market weight and price, so you sell at the point that actually makes the most money.

Written by the Agro Prime Ghana poultry team and reviewed against current industry and market references (Aviagen Ross 308 performance objectives and USDA FAS Ghana poultry reporting). Last updated September 2026.

Why 5–7 weeks is the usual window

The five-to-seven-week window exists because it is where a modern broiler is both heavy enough to sell well and still growing efficiently enough to be worth feeding. Purpose-bred broilers like Ross 308 and Cobb 500 grow astonishingly fast: a Ross 308 reaches about 2.3 kg by 35 days, 3.0 kg by 42 days and 3.7 kg by 49 days as an as-hatched flock under good conditions, per the Aviagen performance objectives. Before about five weeks the bird is usually too light for most Ghanaian buyers and you have not yet captured the cheap early growth; much past seven weeks the bird is eating heavily for slowing, ever-more-expensive gain, and the risk of leg problems, heat mortality and heart failure rises. Under our humid-tropical heat, real growth is a little slower and FCR a little poorer than the temperate book figures — a study of broilers in humid-tropical conditions recorded about 2.5–2.6 kg at 42 days at an FCR of 1.67–1.75 — so many Ghanaian farmers land naturally in the six-to-seven-week range to reach a saleable size. The window is a guide; the exact day within it is where the money is made or lost.

Why holding birds longer costs you

The core reason not to over-hold broilers is that feed conversion gets worse with every passing week, so each extra kilo of weight costs progressively more feed than the last. This is easiest to see by looking at the marginal FCR — the feed it takes to add weight during a given week, rather than the lifetime average. Working from the Ross 308 objectives, a flock converts feed at roughly 1.7 kg of feed per kg of gain between weeks four and five, about 2.0 between weeks five and six, and about 2.2 between weeks six and seven. In other words, the weight you add in the seventh week costs you far more feed per kilo than the weight you added in the fifth. Feed is around 65–70% of a broiler's total cost, so this rising marginal cost eats directly into margin. Add the hidden costs of holding — more days of labour, water, medication risk, heat mortality and a house you cannot refill with the next batch — and the case is clear: past your target weight, every extra day tends to add cost faster than value. Understanding this trade-off is really an exercise in feed conversion ratio, the number that governs broiler profit.

The trade-off: worsening FCR versus market weight

Deciding when to sell is a balance between two opposing forces: a heavier bird is worth more money, but each extra day of weight is bought with more expensive feed. The table below lays the two sides out side by side for a Ross 308, so you can see the exact point where efficiency starts to fall away sharply.

Source: derived from Aviagen Ross 308 (2022) as-hatched objectives; marginal FCR is the feed used to add weight during each week. Under Ghanaian heat, expect slightly lower weights and higher FCR than these ideal figures.

Reading your market: dressed weight versus the live festive trade

The "best" age depends heavily on which market you are selling into, and Ghana has two very different ones. For routine sales — a hotel, a chop bar, a regular dressed-chicken customer — buyers often want a specific carcass size, and because these customers pay per bird or per kilo at a fairly steady price, your interest is in hitting their target weight at the lowest feed cost, which usually means selling earlier in the window while FCR is still good. The second market is the live festive trade, and it behaves differently. According to USDA FAS reporting on Ghana, domestically produced chickens are usually sold as live birds, at an average of around GH¢150 for a 2.8 kg live-weight bird, and increased demand for live birds during the Christmas season pushes prices up and makes local production more attractive. When live-weight demand and price both spike — Christmas, Easter, major festivals — a heavier bird earns real extra money, and the higher price can outweigh the poorer late-stage FCR. The discipline is to hold birds longer only when the market is genuinely paying for that size, and to sell efficiently the rest of the year. Our guides to selling live birds at festive periods and general poultry marketing go deeper on timing the trade.

Also weigh: house turnover and holding risk

A less obvious cost of holding birds too long is that a full house cannot start earning from the next batch — and faster batch turnover is one of the quiet drivers of annual profit. If selling at six weeks instead of seven lets you fit an extra batch or two into the year, that turnover can matter as much as the per-bird margin. Holding also concentrates the risks that grow with age: heavier broilers are more prone to leg and skeletal problems, to heat stress mortality in our climate, and — in fast-growing strains pushed to heavy weights — to metabolic conditions like ascites and sudden death. Every bird that dies in the last, most expensive week takes all the feed it ate down with it, a double blow to your FCR and your margin. So the holding decision is not only "is the extra weight worth the extra feed?" but also "is it worth the extra risk and the delayed next batch?" For most routine production the honest answer past target weight is no.

How to decide your own best selling age

Put the pieces together into a simple decision for each batch:

• Start from your buyer. Know the exact weight your market wants and the price it pays before you place chicks — dressed customers usually reward efficiency (sell earlier); festive live-weight buyers reward size (hold longer).
• Set a target weight and date. For many Ghanaian farms that lands around 6 weeks and 2.5–3.0 kg; adjust for your breed, feed and season.
• Weigh, don't guess. Weigh a sample against the broiler weight chart weekly so you know when the flock hits target — and watch the finisher feed intake climbing as they get there.
• Watch the marginal cost. Once weekly gain slows and marginal FCR passes about 2.0, ask hard whether the extra weight is truly being paid for.
• Factor turnover and risk. Value the empty house you could refill and the rising heat/leg/mortality risk of heavy birds — both argue against over-holding.
• Sell decisively. When weight, market and efficiency line up, sell — chasing a little more size usually costs more than it earns. Compare returns using our broiler-versus-layer profit guide.

The bottom line on when to sell broilers

The best age to sell Ghanaian broilers is a five-to-seven-week window, and the exact day is decided by economics, not by how big you can grow the bird. Because FCR worsens every week — and the marginal feed cost of the last week is worse still — holding birds past your market's target weight burns your most expensive feed for weight the buyer may not pay for. Sell earlier for efficiency and faster turnover when you are supplying steady dressed-chicken customers; hold longer only when a genuine premium market, above all the festive live-weight trade, is clearly paying for size. Decide your target weight, sale date and feed budget before the chicks arrive, weigh against them, and sell decisively when weight, price and efficiency align. Get the timing right and you keep the margin that months of good management earned you.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & further reading

• Aviagen — Ross 308 Broiler Performance Objectives (2022) (body weight and cumulative FCR by age, used to derive marginal FCR).
• USDA Foreign Agricultural Service — Ghana Poultry Voluntary Update 2024 (live-bird sales, ~2.8 kg live weight, festive/Christmas demand).
• PLOS ONE — Growth performance and economic efficiency of broiler strains under humid-tropical conditions (real tropical body weight and FCR at 42 days).
• Agro Prime Ghana guides: feed conversion ratio, finisher feed, selling live birds at festive periods, and broiler vs layer profit.