Short answer: The first 48 hours decide whether a batch settles or slowly loses birds in the brooder. Count the chicks as the box opens, get every one to water within an hour or two, put feed where they can find it, and keep the brooder warm and lit through the first night. Write down what you find on day two, because only a clean count tells you whether a loss came from the road or from the brooder.
Key takeaways
- Count the box as it opens, and photograph any dead chick the same day so the replacement claim is clean.
- Get each chick to water in the first hour or two. Drinking is the first job that matters.
- Scatter starter on clean paper or shallow trays so chicks learn to eat by pecking.
- Keep the lights on through the first two or three nights so chicks can find feed and water.
- Check crops at six to twelve hours and droppings on the second morning, then write it all down.
The first hour starts when the lid comes off
A box of 50 day-old chicks has been shut in a carton for a while, and the first hour is when you find out how the journey went. Do not tip the box and pour the birds onto the litter. Open it slowly, at the brooder, with the warm zone already at temperature. Lift the chicks out in handfuls and set them down near the feed and water, not in the middle of a cold floor.
Look at each chick as it comes out. Healthy chicks are dry, warm to the touch, bright-eyed and moving. They hold their heads up and grab at things. A chick that is cold and damp, lying with its eyes shut or unable to stand, is in trouble, and it needs quick attention rather than a place in the middle of the pile.
If the box feels hot inside, or the chicks are panting in a heap, ventilate it gently and get them out. If the box is cold and the chicks are huddled, warm them in your hands for a few seconds before they go down. Do not hold them for long, and keep them well away from a lamp that is much hotter than your palm.
Our chicks go out of the hatchery the morning they hatch, boxed in ventilated cartons of 50, so the birds you lift out should still be fresh. If the road was long, our guide to transporting day-old chicks explains what the driver and the buyer each owe the birds. We deliver to all 16 regions, and the delivery page sets out how the box reaches you.
Count first, because the count is evidence
Count every chick before you touch the litter. Count the live birds in the brooder, pick out the dead ones and count them separately, and write both numbers on the record sheet with the time and the box number. Once you have done it twice, counting a box of 50 takes about ten minutes.
When you find dead chicks on arrival, count them, photograph them in a clean tray with a sheet of paper showing the date, and send the picture to us on WhatsApp on +233 24 915 1503 the same day. If birds die on the road, we replace them free in the next hatch, and the count and the photo are what let us do that fairly. Two dead out of fifty is not a disaster, but it is only fair to everybody if the numbers are written down on the day rather than remembered on Friday.
Keep the batch paperwork with the box label. The batch record comes with your order and lists the vaccines given at the hatchery. A vet will ask for that record if the flock runs into trouble later, and you will be glad you kept it in one place.
Getting every chick to water
Water is the most important first job. A chick that drinks in the first hour recovers from the road faster and starts eating sooner. A chick that never finds the drinker goes weak, and by the second morning it is the bird that always sits at the edge of the ring.
The method most keepers use is the beak dip. Take a chick in one hand, hold the body lightly, and touch the tip of its beak into the water in the drinker so the chick takes a drop and swallows. Move to the next chick. Do this for the first few dozen birds, then let the rest of the batch copy them, because chicks learn to drink from each other. Dip only the birds that look slow, and check the rest by eye.
- Use clean water at room temperature in shallow drinkers with a flat rim, so chicks cannot tip in.
- Fill the drinkers from a clean container, not from a bucket that has stood in the sun.
- Put drinkers in several spots, not one, so the slow chicks have an easy target.
- Check the water every hour through the first afternoon. Chicks kick litter into it fast.
Leave sugar and vitamin packs out of this first hour. We cover them separately in our article on vitamins and glucose for new chicks, and the short version is that clean water does the job for most batches.
Feed on paper before feed in the trough
Chicks do not know what feed is until they peck at it. The usual first step is a sheet of clean paper or a shallow tray scattered with starter crumble, set right next to the water. Chicks walk onto the paper, peck at the crumbs and learn to eat. The paper does the teaching, and the trough comes later.
Scatter feed a few times during the first day rather than all at once. Crumble that has been trodden into the litter, gone damp and turned grey is a problem, and a chick will eat it if it is the only food in reach. Replace the paper and tray feed often while the birds are small. Lift the paper once the chicks are reliably eating from the feeders, which usually happens within a few days.
Starter has to be small enough for a newly hatched bird to pick up without a struggle, which means crumble or fine mash. Our chick starter feed guide covers what to buy and how much to plan for. The point here is simpler: a chick that has not eaten by the first evening needs help, not a bigger tray.
Light, heat and the first night
Many farmers keep the lights on around the clock for the first two or three nights. A chick that can see is a chick that can find water and feed. Dark corners are where chicks pile up, and a piled chick is usually a cold one. Once the birds are feeding and drinking reliably, you can start a normal light cycle, but do not plunge the brooder into darkness on the first night just because the clock says so.
Heat is the other half of the first night. The chicks should be able to find warm and cool zones inside the ring. If they are all packed under the heat, they are cold. If they are spread to the walls and panting, they are too hot. Most of the drama happens between ten at night and four in the morning, and that is when the heat either holds or fails.
Check the brooder at about ten, once in the middle of the night, and again at first light. Listen as well as look. A steady, soft peeping means the group is settled. A loud, rising call, or a sudden silence after a noisy evening, means something has changed. Find out what it is before you go back to bed.
Ghana makes the first night harder in two ways. Dusty harmattan air settles on the litter, and in a cold spell a sealed house holds damp and ammonia. Power cuts are the other threat, because a bulb that goes off at midnight takes the warmth with it. Our piece on heat sources for brooding in Ghana covers the backup options in detail, and the brooder setup guide shows where the heat should sit before the box comes in.
Reading the crop and the droppings
Two checks tell you more about the first two days than the chicks' appearance does. The first is the crop, the pouch at the base of the neck. Between six and twelve hours after arrival, pick up a sample of ten chicks, one at a time, and feel gently at the crop with a fingertip. A bird that has started eating should feel softly filled. A crop that is still flat and empty after half a day is a warning, and you should look harder at the feed and at the chicks around it.
The second check is the droppings. On the second morning, look at the litter and the paper. Healthy droppings are firm and tapered, with a white cap of urates on top. Droppings that are watery, green, bloody or pasty around the vent are signs to look at more closely, not reasons to panic. A few loose droppings on a hot afternoon are normal. A brooder full of them is not, and that is the time to call your vet and check the water.
Recording what you see in these two checks is worth more than the first-day weight you might be tempted to chase. A weak crop or wet droppings point toward particular causes, and they give your vet something specific to work from. If the litter stays wet and the droppings turn bloody, our coccidiosis guide describes what to look for.
A timeline to pin up beside the brooder
Print this and tape it inside the brooder door. Most keepers miss at least one check when the first day gets busy.
| When | What to do | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 hour | Open the box at the brooder, lift the chicks out, count live and dead | Dry, warm, moving birds; dead ones counted and photographed |
| 1 to 2 hours | Beak-dip the slow chicks, fill drinkers, scatter starter on paper | Chicks drinking and pecking at feed |
| 3 to 6 hours | Walk the ring, top up water, remove any dead birds | Even spread, no piles, no chicks stuck at the edges |
| 6 to 12 hours | Crop check on a sample of ten | Crops softly filled |
| 10 pm and 3 am | Thermometer at chick height and a listening check | Steady peeping, chicks spread across warm and cool zones |
| Morning of day 2 | Count live and dead, check droppings, replace paper and feed | Firm droppings with urate caps; count written down |
| End of day 2 | Weigh a sample of ten, update the record | Average weight and count recorded for the batch |
If your flock is a broiler batch, the broiler day-old chicks page explains the box sizes and how we dispatch them. Layer and dual-purpose birds follow the same first-48-hour routine, though the feed and light plans differ from week two onward.
Need chicks for your next batch?
Send breed, number and town. We reply with price, hatch date and delivery cost in writing.
A worked count: two out of fifty
Say you open a box of 50 and find 48 live chicks and two dead ones. Put the two dead ones in a clean tray, photograph them with the date visible, and send the picture on WhatsApp the same day. Write down 48 live, 2 dead on arrival, and the box number. You now have a clean record that can be checked against the batch sheet and against the next hatch.
Now say the next morning you count 46 live. The two that died on day two are not a dead-on-arrival case, because they survived the road. That loss belongs to the brooder, or to a bird that was weaker than it looked. Check the heat, the water, the feed and the crop results before you decide what went wrong. A loss on the road is a question for the hatchery and the transport. A loss in the brooder is usually a management question, and that one is yours to answer.
Keeping the two numbers apart is the whole point. It stops you blaming the hatchery for a brooder problem, and it stops you hiding a transport problem inside your own record.
What a bad first two days looks like
Most batches settle quickly. A bad start has a recognisable pattern. Chicks stand hunched with feathers fluffed and do not move much when you walk in. They cluster tightly in one corner, sit away from the water and ignore the paper. Their crops stay empty, their eyes look dull, and they cannot right themselves easily when you set them on the floor.
When you see that pattern, do three things at once. Bring the brooder up to temperature, check that the water is flowing, and move any clearly weak birds into a small warm box with water and crumble where you can watch them. Then call your vet, or message us with the counts and the photos. Do not wait for morning if birds are dying overnight.
The question to answer is whether the problem came with the chicks or started in the brooder. If the chicks were weak on arrival, the count and the photo show it. If they were fine and then declined, the brooder, the water or an infection picked up after arrival is the likelier cause. Our article on chick mortality in transit helps you sort out which one you are looking at. Compare the temperatures you recorded with the brooder temperature chart by week before you blame the birds.
Mistakes that cost birds in the first two days
- Pouring the chicks onto cold litter straight from the box, without warming the floor first.
- Leaving the water too deep, or in a bucket that a chick can fall into and drown in.
- Feeding on a bare floor with no paper, so the chicks eat litter along with the feed.
- Switching the light off on the first night to let the birds rest.
- Counting only the live chicks and forgetting the dead ones on arrival.
- Making the first record on day seven, when most of what happened has faded from memory.
Most of the questions that come in during the first two days are already answered on our FAQ page, and the rest are a WhatsApp message away.
A checklist for the first 48 hours
- Warm the brooder and the floor for at least an hour before the box arrives.
- Open the box at the brooder and count live and dead chicks separately.
- Photograph any dead chicks with the date showing, and message us the same day.
- Beak-dip the slow chicks and fill several clean drinkers at room temperature.
- Scatter fresh starter on clean paper, and keep the trays topped up.
- Keep the lights on and check the heat at 10 pm and again around 3 am.
- Check crops on a sample of ten at six to twelve hours, and droppings on the second morning.
- Write the day-two count and average weight on the record before you sleep.
Ready for your next box? You can place the order through the order form, and we put the price in writing before any money changes hands.
Questions farmers ask
Should I give day-old chicks water straight away?
Yes. Water is the first job once the chicks are out of the box. Use clean water at room temperature in shallow drinkers, and beak-dip the slow birds so they learn where it is. Most chicks start drinking within the first hour or two, and the ones that do not need watching closely.
What should I do about dead chicks on arrival?
Count them, photograph them in a clean tray with the date visible, and send the picture to us on WhatsApp on +233 24 915 1503 the same day. Losses on arrival are replaced free in the next hatch. Keep the count on your record, separate from any chicks that die later in the brooder.
Do I need to beak-dip every chick?
No. Dip the chicks that look slow, cold or weak, then watch the rest. Chicks learn to drink from each other, so a few dozen dipped birds usually show the whole batch where the water is. Check the drinkers by eye through the afternoon, and dip again any chick that is still not drinking.
Why keep the lights on for the first nights?
A chick that can see can find its feed and water, and it is less likely to pile into a dark corner. Many keepers run the lights around the clock for two or three nights, then move to a normal cycle once the birds are eating and drinking well. Do not cut the light on the first night just to save power.
What should a healthy day-old chick look like?
A healthy chick is dry, warm to the touch, bright-eyed and moving. It holds its head up, grabs at feed and stands on its feet. A chick that is cold, damp, lying still with its eyes shut or unable to stand needs quick attention and should be separated from the rest.
How do I check a chick's crop?
Pick up the chick and feel gently at the pouch at the base of the neck with a fingertip. Between six and twelve hours after arrival, a chick that has started eating feels softly filled. A crop that is still flat and empty after half a day means the chick has not eaten, and you should check the feed and the chicks around it.
Can I add vitamins to the water on arrival?
You can, but plain clean water is the right default for most batches. A short, light additive can help chicks that arrive cold or slow, following the product label. Do not add vitamins or sugar to water used for a live vaccine. Our vitamins and glucose article goes through the details.
