A Year-Round Poultry Production Calendar for Ghana: Timing Batches, Feed and Sales by Season

Two farmers bought 1,000 Cobb 500 chicks each from us in the same week of October. One had counted backwards from 20 December, brooded through the first cool nights of harmattan, and sold 2.4 kg birds at the peak Christmas price to traders who had booked them in November. The other had simply bought chicks when he had money, hit market weight in the second week of January when every household was still eating leftover chicken and traders were paying a third less, and held the birds for two extra weeks on expensive January feed hoping for a better price that never came. Same chicks, same feed, same district. One made a good margin and the other roughly broke even, and the whole difference was the calendar.

Ghana's poultry year has a shape. Demand for birds spikes at Christmas, Easter and the two Eids, and dips hard in January and during the lean months of the rainy season. Maize is cheapest in the two months after the main harvest and dearest in the hungry gap before it. Newcastle disease follows the harmattan, coccidiosis and wet litter follow the rains, heat stress arrives in March. A farmer who plans batches, feed purchases and flock replacements around that shape earns more from the same birds than one who does not, and the planning is not difficult once it is written down.

At our hatchery in Kasoa the shape of the year is visible in the order book: chick demand surges in September and October for Christmas, again in January for Easter, and layer chick demand runs highest from February to May. This calendar sets out what we tell farmers who ask when to do what.

The three rhythms that drive the calendar

Three cycles overlap in a Ghanaian poultry year, and the calendar is simply their combination.

Weather. Southern Ghana has two rainy seasons: the major rains from roughly April to mid-July, a short dry spell in August, the minor rains in September and October, and then the dry season with the harmattan from late November to February. March is the hottest month before the rains break. Northern Ghana has a single rainy season from about May to October and a long, harsher dry season with a stronger harmattan. Weather drives brooding difficulty, litter condition, disease pressure and water availability, and the details are covered in our guides to harmattan brooding, rainy season management and heat stress.

Feed prices. Maize is 55 to 65 percent of most Ghanaian poultry rations. The main harvest in the middle belt and north comes in from August through October, and prices bottom out roughly from September to November. They climb from January and peak between April and July, when stored maize is running down, before the new crop arrives. Soya follows a similar but less extreme pattern. A farm that buys a large part of its annual maize in September and stores it well pays materially less per bird than one buying month to month; our feed prices guide and the note on aflatoxin and feed storage cover the how and the risks.

Demand. Live-bird and dressed chicken demand peaks in the ten days before Christmas, then Easter, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, whose dates move about eleven days earlier each year and must be checked annually. Smaller peaks come with the major traditional festivals, funerals in the dry season when travel is easy, and the weeks before schools reopen. Demand troughs in January, when households have spent, and through the June to August lean season in rural areas. Egg demand is steadier but rises with school terms and falls in the long vacation and in the rains, and egg prices usually strengthen from November to March when supply dips from molting flocks and farmers who did not replace stock.

Backward planning for broilers

Broiler timing is arithmetic. Decide the sale date, then subtract the growing period, then the brooder preparation, then the chick order lead time. For Cobb 500 or Ross 308 on a good feed programme in Ghana, a 2.2 to 2.5 kg live bird takes 40 to 45 days; on a mid-quality mash or with a slow start, 49 to 56 days. Coloured birds such as Sasso take 63 to 80 days to the same weight. Add seven days of margin, because a trader who has booked birds for 18 December does not want to hear that they are still 1.9 kg.

Growing periods assume good chicks, good feed and sound brooding. Confirm Easter and Eid dates each year and confirm chick availability with the hatchery early; October placements for Christmas are the most oversubscribed of the year.

Two cautions on the Christmas trade. First, everyone does it, so prices at the peak are good but not extraordinary, and the two weeks after Christmas are the worst selling period of the year; do not overshoot. Second, October and November placements brood into the start of the harmattan, and the batch that must be perfect for 20 December is the one most exposed to cold nights. Our Christmas broiler guide covers pricing and booking traders in advance. For a farm with a single house, the year usually fits five to six broiler batches with a two-week clean-out between each; for a farm with two houses, staggered batches give a bird to sell most weeks.

Planning a layer flock across the year

Layers are a longer game: about 18 to 20 weeks of rearing, then 50 to 60 weeks of lay, so a single flock spans roughly a year and a half. The question is when the first egg should arrive. In our experience the best timing brings a flock to point of lay between October and December, for three reasons: egg prices strengthen from November as older flocks molt and supply tightens; a flock that starts laying in the dry season builds its peak on firm litter with low coccidiosis pressure; and the flock's first harmattan hits it young and well-fed rather than at 70 weeks when a molt is likely. That means placing layer chicks from late May to July, which also means brooding in the major rains, when heat is not a problem but wet litter is.

The alternative many farmers choose is placing chicks in February or March to lay from August. That brooding period is hot and dry, the pullets grow through the rains, and the flock comes into lay in the lean season when egg prices are softest. It works, but the money is better the other way. Whichever you choose, plan the replacement flock a year ahead so that the new birds reach point of lay two to four weeks before the old flock is sold, and read our guide to point-of-lay pullet management for the transfer.

Month by month: what to do and what to watch

The calendar below is written for southern and central Ghana. Farmers in the north should shift the rainy-season notes about a month later and treat the harmattan notes as more severe and longer.

A planning framework, not a rulebook; local conditions, your market and each year's weather will shift it. Vaccination timing must follow the programme agreed with your veterinarian.

Feed buying: the calendar decision that pays most

Because feed is two-thirds of cost, the timing of feed purchases has more effect on annual margin than the timing of almost anything else. The seasonal maize spread between the September low and the May peak has in recent years been in the region of 30 to 60 percent, which on a 3,000-layer farm eating around seven bags of feed a day is a large sum across the year. The catch is storage: maize bought in September and kept badly turns into aflatoxin-laden mould by February, which is worse than paying the high price. Bulk buying makes sense only with a dry, raised, ventilated store, sacks off the floor and away from walls, rodent control and a moisture check on delivery; grain over 13 to 14 percent moisture should be dried or refused. A farm without that store should buy fortnightly and accept the seasonal price. Farms that mix their own feed can read the feed making guide for the ingredient side; the calendar point is the same either way.

Disease and vaccination on the calendar

Disease seasons are predictable enough to plan against. Newcastle disease surges from November to February with the dry, dusty, cold conditions and the movement of village flocks; every flock should be fully vaccinated with boosters timed before the season, and biosecurity is tightest then. Respiratory disease, including infectious bronchitis, Mycoplasma and coryza, follows the dust of the harmattan and again the humidity of the rains. Coccidiosis and necrotic enteritis come with wet litter in May and June; fowl pox comes with the mosquito build-up after the rains start; heat stress is a March problem in the south and an April problem in the north; and avian influenza, when it appears, has tended to arrive with the dry season and wild bird movements, which is another reason to keep wild birds out of houses from October.

Set the annual vaccination and health tasks against these seasons rather than only against bird age. A Newcastle booster for layers in October or early November, a fowl pox vaccination before the mosquito season for any bird not already covered, deworming of growers and layers before the rains and again before the dry season, and a mite treatment of layer houses in the hot months are the recurring items. Our vaccination schedule gives the age-based programme; agree the seasonal boosters with your vet, since local disease pressure varies.

Maintenance, cash flow and the quiet months

There are no truly quiet months on a poultry farm, but there are months with less selling. Use them. The short dry spell in August is the time to repair roofs and gutters before the minor rains, replace worn curtains before the harmattan and clean, disinfect and rest houses. The end of the harmattan in February is the time to service fans, check water lines and tanks before the March heat, and repaint or repair the store. January, after Christmas money has come in and before Easter chicks are placed, is when to sit down with the records, calculate the true cost per bird or per tray for the year, and decide what to change. Our guide to poultry cash flow and breakeven walks through the arithmetic.

A worked example: one house, one year

A farmer near Winneba with a single 1,200-bird deep-litter house asked us to plan her year. We set it out as follows. Late October: 1,200 Cobb 500 chicks for Christmas, sold 16 to 22 December. Two weeks of clean-out and rest. Mid-January: 1,000 Sasso for the Easter market in early April, chosen because the coloured bird sells well to the funeral and festival trade in her area and the slower growth suited the cooler weeks. Mid-April: 1,000 fast broilers for a steady trade to two dressers through late May and June, kept modest because of the lean season. Mid-June: a rest and a roof repair. Late July: 1,200 fast broilers for the school reopening and early September trade. Mid-September: a full clean and disinfection, and the maize purchase for the Christmas batch. That is five batches in the year, with the biggest at Christmas, and the house empty during the wettest and most disease-prone weeks of June.

Her first year on the plan returned a margin about 40 percent higher than the previous year, in which she had run seven batches back to back with no rest, missed Christmas by a fortnight and lost a June batch to coccidiosis in wet litter. The birds were the same, the feed was the same, the house was the same. The calendar was different.

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