The first week of a broiler batch is quiet. The chicks are small, the brooder is warm, and the feed bags stacked by the door look like one more line on a list. By week six or seven, when the birds are heading for market at 2.3 to 2.55 kg live, that stack has become the biggest number on the cost sheet. The maize inside it has more say over the result than most people expect.
Maize is the energy in the bag
Most poultry rations in Ghana lean on maize for energy. Soya and other protein meals supply the building blocks for muscle, and a premix adds the vitamins and minerals a fast-growing bird needs. Maize is usually the largest share by weight in a starter or grower mix, so when its price moves, the cost of the bag moves with it. Soya and premixes move too, and that is where the cedi comes in later.
We will not quote a maize price here. The prices we can stand behind are for finished feed, not for the grain inside it, and a single market-day figure would not help anyone plan a batch. What we can show is how a change in the price of the bag reaches the birds, and how large that change is for a house of 1,000.
Three forces that push the bag price around
Three things do most of the work. Each has a pattern you can see coming, but none of them tells you how large the move will be, which is why a sensible farm plans for a range rather than a single number.
Harvest season
Maize is usually cheapest when the main harvest comes in and grain moves from farms into markets in volume. Prices tend to firm in the months before the next harvest, when stocks run lower. A mill that buys during the harvest can stock up cheaply, but it needs somewhere dry to hold the grain until the bags are sold. A farm that buys finished feed in the lean months is paying for the mill's timing, whether or not it sees that.
Some farms try to buy at harvest and hold stock through the lean months. That can work, but only with dry storage and an honest count of how long the feed will keep. A bag held for three months in a damp store can lose more value than the price gap it was meant to capture. Storage is part of the price, and it belongs in the sums before the truck arrives.
Harmattan
The harmattan usually arrives around December and stays into February. It brings dust, dry air and cool nights. For a broiler house, cool nights mean more heat in the brooder during the first days of a placement, which pushes up the brooding part of the cost. Dust makes litter and feed storage harder to keep clean. A batch placed in the harmattan does not automatically cost more, but its heat budget needs checking before the chicks arrive.
Cold weather also changes how much the birds eat. Broilers tend to eat more when the house is cold, which means the feed bill can rise even if the bag price does not move at all. Watching daily intake through the first two weeks of a harmattan placement is worth the effort, because it shows the real cost while there is still time to adjust the house.
The cedi
Some feed inputs are priced off imports, including vitamins, trace minerals and parts of the protein mix. When the cedi weakens against the currencies those ingredients are bought in, the premix gets dearer. Mills do not always pass that on at once. When they do, the rise often reaches the bag after a delay, which makes the link hard to see. A farm that only watches the shelf price will usually notice the change late.
What a bag move does to a batch of 1,000 birds
The arithmetic is simpler than the market. A broiler eats about 4.2 kg of feed from placement to market, so a thousand birds eat 4,200 kg, which is 84 bags of 50 kg. Every GH₵10 change in the price of a bag moves that batch's feed bill by GH₵840. The table runs across the range we have confirmed. It uses the starter price as its reference, so read it as a scale guide rather than a feed quote.
| Price per 50 kg bag | Feed bill, 1,000 birds | Extra cost against GH₵400 |
|---|---|---|
| GH₵400 (GAPFA member, low) | GH₵33,600 | Baseline |
| GH₵410 (GAPFA member, high) | GH₵34,440 | GH₵840 |
| GH₵451 (De Heus list, low) | GH₵37,884 | GH₵4,284 |
| GH₵472 (De Heus list, high) | GH₵39,648 | GH₵6,048 |
Set against the batch's economics, the difference is large. Typical net profit in a normal cycle runs at GH₵12 to GH₵20 per bird, or GH₵12,000 to GH₵20,000 across 1,000 birds. Moving from the cheapest member price to the top of the De Heus list would cost about GH₵6,000 of that, which is between a third and a half of the profit from one cycle. The chicks add their own weight to the bill too, at GH₵20,000 for 1,000 day-old birds from Agro Prime.
Feed is only one part of the cash cycle. Our guide to poultry cash flow and break-even in Ghana shows how the feed bill, the chick and the sale price interact across the whole cycle.
What a year of batches does to the bill
A single batch is one snapshot. A broiler house that runs five or six batches a year buys feed for all of them, and a bag price that holds at the top of the De Heus list for a whole year touches every one of those cycles. Using the 84 bags needed for each 1,000-bird batch, five batches means 420 bags and six means 504. At the top of the list, the difference between that price and the cheapest member price comes to about GH₵30,240 over five batches and GH₵36,288 over six.
Those figures assume the house is full every time and the price stays put, which rarely happens in practice. They are useful for another reason. They show that a feed price which looks minor on one bag becomes a serious number over a full year of placements. A farm that plans a year of batches should therefore plan a year of feed prices, with a range, rather than a single bag price copied from last month's receipt.
Keep a price log before you need one
The simplest tool a farm can use is a price log. Write down the date, the seller, the brand, the bag weight, the price paid and whether it was cash or credit. Add a line each time a supplier warns of a change, and note the reason they gave if one was offered. After three or four months, the log shows the pattern of your own supplier, which is more useful than a general news story about maize.
A log also protects you in a dispute. If a price moved between two orders, you will know by how much and when. It helps when you negotiate, too. A supplier who sees that you track prices will usually take your volume more seriously, and you will be less likely to pay a premium out of habit.
Small sheds feel the swing first
A farm with one shed usually buys bag by bag, often from a shop, and pays whatever that shop charges on the day. It has little leverage with a supplier and no spare stock to hold back when prices rise. A larger buyer can plan a quarter's purchases, negotiate on volume and carry a few weeks of feed. The same cedi movement reaches both of them, but it lands on the smaller farm with less room to absorb it.
Cash flow is the other pressure. A small farm often pays for each bag in full at the counter, which means its money is out of the account before the birds have grown a single gram. Holding a few extra weeks of feed sounds sensible, but it ties up cash that the farm may need for chicks, heat or labour. That is why small sheds are often forced to buy at the wrong moment, when the price is up and the cash has finally come in.
Ration quality matters as much as the price
A cheaper bag is only a saving if the birds grow on it. A ration that is weaker in energy or protein than the birds need can slow growth, stretch the cycle and push the sale back into a less favourable week. A bag that looks like a bargain on the price list can cost more in days on the farm. Ask for the feed specification in writing, check that it suits the stage of the bird, and watch how the flock responds in the first two weeks, when problems show up most clearly.
Timing beats thrift on the feed bill
A quiet month sells a bird at around GH₵75, and a peak can reach GH₵100 or more. Sell 1,000 birds across that gap and the difference is at least GH₵25,000. That is roughly four times the largest feed swing in the table above. For many farms, the calendar is a bigger lever than the feed store.
The peaks are predictable. Christmas, Easter and Eid all lift demand, and birds that reach market in those weeks tend to sell higher. Our guide to the Christmas broiler market in Ghana covers how buyers behave in those weeks. Working back from the sale date is simple. Birds take six to seven weeks to reach 2.3 to 2.55 kg, so the chicks need to be in the house about that long before the week you want to sell. Our hatchery hatches every Thursday at 7:00, so a placement date can be planned weeks ahead, and you can order day-old chicks in Ghana to fit it.
If a placement misses its window, the cost is not only the feed bought early or late. The birds keep eating while they wait, and they reach market in a less favourable week. Fixing the date first and the feed purchase second keeps the two decisions in the right order.
Build the batch around your own dates
The calculator on the partner page lets you change the placement date, the feed price and the sale price, so you can see how a timing change moves a 1,000-bird batch. The same page sets out the written profit-share terms. Go to the partner page to run your own version.
Feed decisions a farm can make
The feed price is not in a farm's control, but much of the feed bill is. Start with waste. A bag that sits in a damp corner loses value quietly, and a bag that gets within reach of rodents is lost completely. Keep feed off the floor and under cover, use the oldest bags first, and make sure the store is ventilated without letting in rain.
Buying is the second lever. Ask your supplier what volume earns a better price and whether they will hold a price for a set period if you commit in writing. Some will and some will not. A farm that buys in planned quantities gives its supplier something to plan around, which is more useful than a panic order in week five.
Track intake too. Record the feed that goes into the house each week and compare it with the birds' weight. When feed use rises without a matching gain in weight, something is wrong, whether that is wastage, disease, or water and temperature problems in the house. Catching it in week three costs far less than finding it at sale time.
Dead birds still eat
Well-managed flocks typically see mortality of 3% to 5%. Poor management or disease can push it to 10% to 20%, and at 20% the profit from a whole cycle can disappear. A bird that dies in week four has already eaten its share of the bag, so a bad mortality week costs you the feed as well as the bird. Mortality is one of the few variables a farm controls directly, and it deserves as much attention as the feed price.
Reading the maize story without overreacting
The maize price matters because it sets the floor under your feed bill. It does not tell you exactly when to buy, and chasing it week to week tends to end in panic buying at the wrong moment. A farm that stores feed well, tracks intake, keeps mortality low and times its placements to the calendar has more control than one that only reacts to the market. None of that removes the risk. It turns the risk into something you can plan for, rather than something that catches you in week six.
Plan a batch around the feed price
For the chick side of the cost, read our guide to day-old chick prices in Ghana for 2026.
