Choosing Litter and Bedding for Ghana Poultry Houses

A cheap bag of litter can cost you a batch

A bag of rice husk at half the price of shavings still ends up costing more if it turns into a wet paste by the second week. The pattern we hear about most is a farmer who bought bedding on price alone, then found the floor soaked under the drinkers and the birds' feet balled with litter by the third week of the batch.

Litter has one main job. It takes up the water the birds drink but do not keep, and it stays loose enough that the manure dries rather than sealing into a crust. Dust, cost and how easy the house is to clean out all come after that. So the question to ask is not "what is the cheapest material?" but "how long will this stay dry under my birds, in my weather, with my drinkers?"

What a Ghana house asks of its bedding

Three conditions matter more in Ghana than in cooler countries. The first is heat and humidity, which speed up the breakdown of wet material and push ammonia up faster. The second is the seasonal swing. The rains drive water through open sides and off the roof edge, and harmattan dust settles on everything and makes a dry bed dusty. The third is that many farmers buy in small lots, so the material you pick has to be available again six weeks later, not just on the day you visit the supplier. Our deep litter guide covers how a bed behaves across a batch, and this piece is about what goes into it.

When we talk bedding through with a farmer, we look at five things in this order:

• Water holding: how much moisture the material takes before it sits wet on top.
• Dust: what it throws into the air when the birds scratch and when you spread it.
• Breakdown rate: material that rots quickly builds ammonia and mould.
• Availability: whether the same grade will be on the same truck next month.
• Safety: no chemical residue, no mould, no sharp fragments that cut feet.

Wood shavings: the dependable default, if they are clean

If you are unsure, shavings are the material we would start with. Clean shavings from untreated timber soak up water quickly, stay loose through a batch, and let a healthy top layer dry in the sun and air rather than sealing into a crust.

The problems are in the detail. Very fine shavings and sawdust-like dust go into the air and irritate the airways of both birds and workers, so ask for a mix with some larger flakes. Shavings from pallet wood, old furniture or painted boards can carry treatment chemicals, and you cannot see that in the bag. Ask the sawmill what timber it cuts and whether its offcuts come from treated stock. Fresh shavings that are still wet will heat and go mouldy in a bag within a few days, so check before you pay.

• Squeeze a handful. It should feel damp, not dripping, and spring apart when you open your hand.
• Smell it. A sour or musty smell means it has started to rot in storage.
• Look for white or green fuzz. That is mould, and it goes back to the sawmill.

Rice husk: cheaper per bag, heavier to handle

Rice husk is widely used because it is cheap near the mills, and it holds up well in a deep litter bed. It is also heavy, awkward to spread evenly over a concrete floor, and slow to break down. That slowness is useful when you want one bed to last more than one batch. It becomes a problem when the husk is damp on arrival, because it can sit wet at the bottom of the sack and only show the damage once you open it.

Husk that has been lying in a mill yard through a rainy week is the one to avoid. Stale husk smells, can grow mould, and throws a dust load that hits the birds in the first hour after you spread it. Chicks in their first week will peck at anything on the floor, so rice husk needs a layer of paper or a finer material under the brooder until they are past the pecking stage. Husk that the birds swallow in quantity can ball up in the crop.

Groundnut shells and maize residues: the mould trap

Groundnut shells look like a bargain when you are standing beside a huller, and in parts of the north and centre they are often the cheapest bedding around. Be careful with them. Shells take up less water than shavings and they pack down faster, so a wet crust forms sooner. Shells stored damp and then used as bedding grow mould, and groundnut residues are a known route for aflatoxin, which you do not want on the house floor or anywhere near the feed trail. Our feed storage guide explains why mould matters and what to check in stored feed, and the same reasoning applies to any groundnut material that comes onto the farm.

Maize stover and chopped maize cobs follow a similar pattern. They can be acceptable for a short grow-out in the dry season, but they draw rodents into the bed and turn into a damp mat once the rains start. If you use them, chop them small, keep them off the wall edges, and plan to remove the whole bed at the end rather than topping it up.

Sawdust: check the source before the first bag goes in

Sawdust is the material most farmers never ask about. It comes from sawmills, carpenters and timber yards, and it ranges from clean, unpainted offcuts to fine dust mixed with glue and chemicals. The fine end of that range packs like flour when it is wet and blows about when it is dry. Coarse, clean sawdust from untreated timber can work well in a brooder ring or a thin litter layer, but it needs spreading thin, turning regularly, and checking for smell and heat.

If the mill cannot tell you what wood it cut, treat the sawdust as unknown. A simple test: if you would not spread it in your garden bed, do not spread it under your birds.

The first ten days: a different floor for chicks

Day-old chicks need a surface that gives them warmth and grip, and that they cannot eat. Many farmers lay paper or old feed sacks over a thin layer of fine shavings for the first week, then take the paper away and bring in the normal bed as the birds get bigger. This matters because chicks swallow bedding in the first days, and a crop blocked by husk or long flakes is a loss you can avoid.

Our brooder setup guide covers the ring and the heater. The point here is that the litter for chicks and the litter for birds at four weeks are not always the same material, and buying one cheap bag for both is false economy.

Working out the cost of a whole batch of bedding

Price bedding per cubic metre of floor, for the whole batch, rather than per bag. The arithmetic is simple. Measure the floor, multiply by the depth you want, then ask your supplier how many cubic metres a sack or a pickup load actually holds. Prices change too much between towns for us to give you a reliable local figure, so the example below uses placeholder prices. Put your own quotes in. Our current chick prices are on the day-old chicks price page, but bedding prices move with the local market, so get those from your own supplier.

Take a house 10 metres long and 12 metres wide, which is 120 square metres. For a first bed about 7 centimetres deep you need roughly 8.4 cubic metres of loose material, plus a top-up in the middle of the batch. Suppose shavings cost GH₵ 180 per cubic metre delivered and rice husk costs GH₵ 90. The first fill is then GH₵ 1,512 for shavings and GH₵ 756 for husk. Husk saves GH₵ 756 on paper. Now suppose the husk patch near the drinkers turns to a paste in week four, and you have to lift half the bed and buy and spread replacement material. Half a bed is another GH₵ 378 of husk, plus a day of labour, plus the birds that grew slower on the wet patch. The saving shrinks fast. The cheapest bedding is the one that does not need rescuing.

Side by side: the five materials compared

This table is the summary we would give a farmer standing at the mill gate with a phone in one hand and a calculator in the other. Read across each row, then check the last column against your own house and your own season.

Storing bedding through the rains and the harmattan

Most litter problems start before the sack is opened. Store bedding under a roof, off the ground on planks or pallets, and away from the wall where rain splashes. In the rainy months a sack that sits on bare soil for a week can wick enough moisture to start mould. Harmattan flips the risk. The material dries out and turns dusty, so lightly wet it before spreading to keep the dust down and the bed working.

Buy for the whole batch. Running out in week four and finishing the bed with whatever is lying in the yard is how a clean house ends up with a patch of mouldy maize stover by the drinkers.

Four bedding mistakes we keep seeing

1. Spreading fresh litter over a wet old bed, which seals the moisture in underneath.
2. Choosing the material the local mill sells cheapest, without checking it can supply the same grade next month.
3. Ignoring the drinkers. A leaking nipple line will soak any bedding you buy, and our ammonia article shows how one wet strip turns into a gas problem.
4. Spreading fine dust on a windy morning, then wondering why the birds are sneezing by lunchtime.

Bedding checklist before the chicks arrive

• Source and grade confirmed in writing, with the storage conditions at the supplier.
• Material checked for smell, mould and fuzz before it leaves the supplier's yard.
• Enough for the whole batch, plus about 10 per cent spare.
• Brooder floor covered with paper or a finer layer for the first days.
• Drinkers checked for leaks and set at the right height before any litter goes down.
• Stock stored under cover and off the ground, away from the rain line.

If you are restocking after a clean-out, our Ross 308 broiler chicks start from GH₵ 20 each, confirmed at order. Use the order form on our homepage, or WhatsApp us on +233 24 915 1503 with your house size and the date the bed will be ready. Our broiler day-old chicks page has the breed details.

Questions farmers ask