Starter, Grower and Finisher Feeds: When to Switch in Ghana

Why one bag from day one costs you money

A farmer who buys one good feed and keeps it for the whole six weeks is not doing anything foolish. Plenty of small flocks do exactly that and still make a profit. But a broiler changes shape fast, and the feed that suits a chick in its first fortnight is not the feed that suits the same bird at week five.

In the first week the chick is feathering, building muscle and learning to eat. It needs a high-protein diet and it eats very little. By the last two weeks the bird is eating a lot and putting on weight. If you feed the high-protein starter the whole time, you pay for protein the bird cannot use. If you feed the finisher from the start, the chick grows slowly and the flock comes out uneven.

The uneven flock is the one we see most often. A house fed one ration from day one usually has a long tail: some birds at target weight and others a kilo behind, with the small ones pushed away from the feeder. Phase feeding is not magic. It just matches the bag to the bird's age.

Every broiler day-old chick we hatch leaves here ready for that kind of programme, so the feed plan you set on day one matters from the first morning in the brooder.

Starter: the first two to three weeks

Starter is the feed your chicks live on while they learn to eat and drink properly, so the first job is making sure they find it. Spread a clean sheet of paper or a flat feed tray on the litter for the first two days. Chicks peck at anything that looks like food, and a crumble on a flat surface is far easier to find than a pellet at the bottom of a tall feeder.

Starter is usually sold as a crumble or a fine mash. Crumble suits chicks well because it is the right size to swallow, and it throws off less dust. A starter that is mostly dust tells you the bag has been shaken about on a long bus or truck ride or stored in a damp corner. Pick up a handful and look at it before it goes in the trough.

Check the crops. In the first 48 hours, feel the crops of a few birds at dusk. A full, soft crop means the bird is eating and drinking. An empty crop after a day in the house tells you to walk back and check the water and the brooder heat before you blame the feed.

Most farmers keep starter on until about day fourteen to twenty-one, depending on how the flock looks and what the bag says. Do not go by the calendar alone. A flock that is slow to feather or small for its age should stay on starter a few days longer. A strong, even flock can move on a little earlier. Ask your supplier what the starter bag is designed for, then check that against your own birds.

Grower: the middle weeks

The grower is the bridge between a chick and a bird that is mostly muscle and fat. It carries less protein than starter, because the bird no longer needs to feather as fast, and more energy so the bird can start to put on weight. Most farmers feed it from the end of the starter until the bird is around four weeks old.

This is the phase where a flock shows its real condition. Feed intake rises sharply. A bird that ate a few grams a day in its first week is now eating several times that. If feeder space is short, or the feed does not reach the back wall of the house, the strong birds crowd in and the weak ones go without. Give each bird its share of trough length, and walk the house twice a day to see where the feed is landing.

Water matters more in the grower phase than most people expect. A bird that eats a larger ration and then finds the drinkers dry will eat less the next day. Check the drinkers every morning and again around midday in the hot months.

Finisher: getting the last kilos on

The finisher carries the most energy and the least protein of the three. It is the feed for the last stretch, when the bird is putting on fat and muscle at its fastest and every extra gram costs more to make than the one before it.

The finisher is also where the market date decides the profit. Feed cost per kilo of weight rises as the bird gets heavier, because each new kilo takes more feed than the kilo before. Work out the weight your buyers want, then the day the flock will reach it. If the birds are already at the weight your buyer pays for, a fifth week of finisher is money thrown into the litter. Unless the buyer is paying for size, sell.

If your finisher contains a medicated additive, read the label for the withdrawal period, the number of days that must pass between the last medicated feed and the day the bird goes to market. Your vet's advice comes first on any treatment. A sale that breaks a withdrawal rule can cost you more than the whole batch. If you are planning the cycle, our guide to getting heavy broilers covers the weight side in more detail.

Switching by age and weight together

Use the table below as a planning guide. The age ranges are typical for a commercial broiler programme in the tropics. Your feed supplier's phase guide, and your own weighing, should overrule the table whenever they disagree.

Weigh around ten birds once a week, chosen at random from across the house. Do not weigh the biggest bird in the corner and assume the rest match. Write the average on the record sheet beside the feed you gave that week, and the switch stops being a guess.

A costed example for a 35-day programme

Here is one worked example, using round numbers so the arithmetic is easy to follow. The prices are illustrations, not quotes. Put in your own supplier's figures before you use it to make a decision.

Suppose a starter costs GH₵9 a kilo, a grower GH₵8 and a finisher GH₵7.50. A bird that goes out at about two and a half kilos after 35 days might eat roughly 0.6 kg of starter, 1.4 kg of grower and 1.7 kg of finisher. That is about 3.7 kg of feed in total.

Add a chick at GH₵20, which is our Ross 308 starting price on the current price list, and the feed bill comes to about GH₵49 for each bird. That is before bedding, labour, power, vaccines and the birds you lose. Our starting price list puts a live broiler of about two and a half kilos at GH₵110. On paper the margin looks comfortable. Once you take off losses and overheads it is much thinner, so keep the mortality figure in front of you every week.

How to change feed without a dip

Sudden feed changes slow birds down. The gut needs a day or two to adjust, and during that time some birds eat less and the whole flock looks flat. A simple blend over three to four days solves most of it.

1. Day one: three-quarters old feed, one-quarter new.
2. Day two: half and half.
3. Day three: one-quarter old feed, three-quarters new.
4. Day four onward: new feed only.

Mix the blend in a clean bucket, not in the trough, so each bird gets the same mix. Do the changeover on a cool morning if you can. In the hot months a flock that already eats less in the afternoon can drop further when you change feed in the middle of the day.

Mistakes we see on farms

Some of these look small. Together they decide whether a flock finishes well or limps to market.

• Keeping starter on until the birds are nearly ready to sell, which leaves them short of energy and slow in the last week.
• Jumping to finisher early to save money, which leaves the chicks short of protein while they are feathering.
• Letting the feeder run empty between deliveries, especially at the weekend when the feed shop is closed.
• Buying a cheap bag from an unknown source and never checking its protein figure against the label.
• Switching phases by the calendar when the flock is clearly a few days behind or ahead.

The empty feeder is the one that hurts most. A flock that goes without feed for half a day catches up poorly, and the uneven birds stay uneven to the end. Keep a reorder point in kilos, so the feeder never gets to empty.

Harmattan, rains and the Christmas rush

Ghana's seasons change how a grower feed behaves. The harmattan arrives around December and stays into February, and the air turns dry and dusty. Feed picks up dust from the floor and from the store, and a bird that breathes dust while it eats can have watery eyes and a sore throat. Cover the feed bins, sweep the store each morning and keep feeders off bare soil.

In the rainy season the risk moves to moisture. A grower bag left open in a humid store can turn musty within days. Order in amounts the flock finishes in about a fortnight, and rotate the stock so the oldest bag goes out first.

If you are growing for Christmas, count back from the market date. A flock that needs to be ready in mid-December has to be planned from the day the chicks arrive. Read our note on when to buy chicks for the festive market before you order, because the harmattan and the rush often land in the same weeks. Eid and Easter buyers work the same way. Plan the finisher around the day the buyers want the birds, not the day the feed runs out.

A checklist for each phase switch

Print this and keep it by the store door. Tick each line before you open the new bag.

1. Weigh ten birds at random and write the average down.
2. Read the feed label for the phase name, the protein figure and any withdrawal period.
3. Look at the feed: no mould, no sour smell, no heavy dust at the bottom of the bag.
4. Set the changeover plan: three or four days of blended feed.
5. Check feeder space and that every trough reaches the back wall.
6. Confirm the drinkers are full and clean before the first new feed goes out.
7. Note the day, the phase and the bag number in your batch record.

If you do this every time, the switch takes five minutes. If you skip it, the first sign of trouble will be a slow flock two weeks later, and by then it is hard to trace back to the bag. Order your next batch through the order form or on WhatsApp at +233 24 915 1503 so the chicks and the feed plan arrive together.

Questions farmers ask