Charcoal, Gas or Infrared Brooder for Ghana?

Three questions before you buy any heat source

Farmers ask us which heater to buy most weeks, and our first reply is always three questions back. How many chicks will sit under the heat at the same time? How many hours a day does your power really run? And can the brooder room take fresh air at night without a draught hitting the chicks?

Those three answers choose the heat for you. Most of the arguments you read online are people giving different answers to the same questions. A farmer on a steady grid with a closed store room needs a different tool from a farmer in a village with a generator and a corrugated roof.

Count the chicks you will brood at once, not the flock you hope to sell. Write down the longest outage you have had in the last three months. Then stand in the room at night and feel for draughts. A heat source is only as good as the air around it.

Our broiler day-old chicks arrive in ventilated boxes of 50 whichever heater you pick, dispatched the day they hatch and sent to all 16 regions. Heat is the part of the farm you control once the box leaves us. In our experience the first losses on a new farm more often come from the brooder than from the chicks.

Infrared bulbs: cheap to start, dark when the power goes

The red infrared bulb on a ceramic holder is still the starting point for most small brooders. A 250-watt bulb hung at the right height gives a warm spot the chicks can walk into and out of, which is exactly what you want. You can raise or lower it as they grow, and a few spare bulbs cost very little next to a lost batch.

The weak point shows up the first time the supply drops at two in the morning. The bulb makes heat only while the electricity flows, so the chicks lose their heat source at the same moment the room starts to cool. Infrared is the simplest of the three methods and the least forgiving when power is unreliable.

Run the sums with your own tariff. Four 250-watt bulbs running 12 hours a night use 12 kilowatt-hours. Multiply that by the rate printed on your ECG bill and you have the real cost of the heat, not a figure from the shop. Keep the same setup for one batch so the bills from batch to batch compare fairly.

Wiring is where bulb brooders cause fires. Use a proper ceramic lamp holder, keep dry litter and plastic well clear of the glass, and fit a wire guard so a curious chick cannot peck at a hot bulb. If the wiring in your store was done by a friend and not an electrician, have it looked at before the first box arrives.

Gas brooders: the steadiest heat, and the least forgiving

A good gas brooder warms the whole ring more evenly than a bulb can. The flame holds its output through a cold night, the chicks spread into the warm zone, and you are not at the mercy of the grid for every hour of the brood.

Gas asks more of you. The cylinder has to stand upright, outside the brooder, with a regulator fitted. Check the hose and every joint with soapy water before each batch, and again after any cylinder change. If you smell gas, close the valve, open the doors and leave the room before you do anything else.

The cylinder is also the usual reason a gas brooder goes out at night. Read the gauge before dusk, not at midnight when the flame has already died and the room is already cold. Keep a second cylinder ready in a dry place away from the brooder, and write the date of each change on the cylinder with a marker.

Gas burns and gives off water vapour, so the litter gets damper than it would under a bulb. Without steady air movement, wet litter starts to smell of ammonia within days. Gas works in a ventilated shed. It does not work in a sealed store room with the doors shut.

Charcoal pots: why they do not belong indoors

Charcoal is the cheapest heat on the day you buy it, and that is the trap. When charcoal burns with limited air it gives off carbon monoxide. The gas has no smell and no colour, so nothing warns you until someone or something in the room is already in trouble.

The pattern is easy to recognise once you know it. Chicks that should be up at the feeder are quiet and sleepy in the morning, they sit with their beaks open, or they gather in a tight pile and will not move when you walk in. Treat that as an emergency: open every door and window, move the chicks into fresh air, and get help before you go back in the room.

Charcoal and wood also throw sparks and smoke into dry litter. For a farmer with no alternative, the only tolerable use is an open-sided shelter with plenty of air, kept apart from any sleeping space, and even there a bulb or gas is the better choice. Treat charcoal as a short-term last resort, never as the plan for a flock. For the running-cost side of the same choice, our earlier heat source guide works through the numbers in its own way.

The three heat sources side by side

Use this table as a first filter. It does not replace the checks further down the page.

Read the table across the row, not down the column. The bulb is the easiest to start and the hardest to trust. The gas brooder is the strongest and the most demanding. The charcoal pot looks free and is the only one that can kill a brood in a sealed room.

Pick the heat by flock size, not by the shop's brochure

Flock size changes the answer more than any other factor, so start there.

1. Up to about 50 chicks in a ring or small pen: one or two infrared bulbs, plus a spare bulb and a battery torch for the night checks.
2. About 50 to 150 chicks: several bulbs spread around the ring, or one gas brooder if the house moves air and you can read the cylinder gauge easily.
3. Above about 150 chicks in one brood: split the brood into two rings or two rooms and treat each as its own small house. A single heat source trying to warm a large floor usually leaves a cold corner and a crowded hot corner.

These are working ranges, not limits. A brooder with good insulation and a tight roof holds heat on less fuel than an open shed on a windy site. If you are buying Kuroiler or Noiler chicks for a dual-purpose flock, the same ranges apply, but plan the heat for the box you actually order.

Working out the running cost for 200 chicks

Say you buy 200 chicks as two boxes of 100. For the first three weeks you run eight 250-watt bulbs across two rings, 12 hours a night. That is 24 kilowatt-hours a night, and over 21 nights it comes to 504 kilowatt-hours. Multiply that total by your tariff and you have the bulb cost for the first three weeks.

The gas sum is harder to pin down in advance, because it depends on the cylinder, the flame setting and the weather. Track it on the first batch. Note the day you change each cylinder, the hours the flame ran, and how cold the night was. By the second batch you will know your own figure, and that is worth more than any table written for someone else's shed.

Keep the chicks in the picture as well. Buying 200 Sasso chicks at the starting price of GH₵13 a chick, confirmed at order, comes to GH₵2,600 before any heat, feed or water. A few cedis of bulb or gas a night is small beside that outlay, but one cold night that kills ten birds costs more than a whole month of heat. Check the current starting prices before you budget.

Backups for the night the power goes

Plan the backup before the first night, not after the first outage. Most of the losses we hear about happen on the second or third night of a brood, when the farmer has stopped checking because nothing has gone wrong yet.

• A spare bulb and a spare lamp holder, already wired and waiting on a hook.
• A gas cylinder with a regulator, kept outside and checked for leaks, if your house can take gas.
• A thermometer you can read in the dark, placed at chick level in the warm zone.
• A written night routine: who checks the brooder, at what hours, and what to do if the chicks crowd into one corner.

A warm-water bottle wrapped in a towel buys time for a short gap, but it will not carry a brood through a long outage. If your site has no grid at all, our guide on brooding without electricity works through the solar and LPG options in detail.

Which heat to lean on through the Ghanaian year

The season changes the demand as well as the risk. In the harmattan, nights in the south can fall into the low twenties and the air is dry and dusty. The brood needs more heat for longer, and the room has to keep dust out at the same time. Gas gives strong heat, but the room still needs enough air to clear the moisture it adds. Bulbs are steady if your power is steady, and a bulb holder full of dust is a fire risk you can clear with a dry cloth each morning.

In the rainy season the trouble is the power and the damp. Storms take out lines, and wet litter becomes a bigger enemy than the cold. Bulbs in this season need a tested backup. Gas needs a cylinder place that stays dry, and the spare cylinder should not sit on wet concrete.

In the hot dry months you may need very little heat after the first week. A bulb you can switch off or lift is handy. Gas is easy to turn down, but many farmers leave it burning out of habit. Look at the chicks before you decide to run the heat all night.

What each heat source does to the air the chicks breathe

Every heat source adds something to the room. Gas adds carbon dioxide and water vapour. A properly burning flame in a ventilated shed is manageable. A bulb adds almost nothing to the air and dries it slightly, which helps the litter stay drier. Charcoal adds carbon monoxide, and that is the one you cannot allow in any enclosed space.

Ammonia is the quiet partner in all three cases. It comes from wet litter and wet droppings, and it irritates the eyes and airways long before a farmer smells it strongly. Keep the litter dry under the warm zone and run enough air through the room to clear the smell by morning. If your own eyes sting when you walk in, the air is already a problem for the chicks.

Mistakes we see most often with brooder heat

1. Lighting the heat on the morning the chicks arrive, so the room is still cold and the thermometer has never been tested against a real reading.
2. Hanging one bulb over a corner, so the chicks crowd into the only warm spot and pile up on each other.
3. Keeping a gas brooder in a store room with the doors shut at night.
4. Buying a cheap bulb holder with no guard, then hanging it low enough for a chick to reach.
5. Trusting the heat on the first night and never checking again until the chicks have gone quiet.

If you want the week-by-week targets to measure against, our brooder temperature chart sets them out. The heat source does not matter much if nobody is reading the thermometer. Questions we have not covered here are answered in our farm FAQ.

A checklist before you light the brooder

• Heat source tested with no chicks inside, running for at least six hours before the box is due.
• Thermometer at chick level in the warm zone, and a second one at the cold edge of the ring.
• Spare bulb, spare holder or spare cylinder, stored somewhere dry and easy to reach at night.
• A guard around every bulb, with no plastic or dry litter within reach of the glass.
• Gas joints checked with soapy water, cylinder upright and standing outside the brooder.
• Fresh air moving across the room without a draught falling on the chicks.
• Night checks written down with the names of the people doing them and the hours.

When the list is ticked, you are ready for the box. Message us on WhatsApp at +233 24 915 1503 if you want to talk through which breed suits your heat set-up, or place your order through the order form. Farm visits are by appointment, and you can read more about who we are and how we hatch before you come.

Questions farmers ask