Fattening Rams for the Festive Season in Ghana

The last month before Sallah fills the ram pen

By the middle of the dry season the questions start arriving. A man with a rope and a notebook wants to know which ram will look best at the gate on the morning of the feast. A woman who has been saving from her market trade asks whether a ram bought now will be worth more in six weeks. A young farmer who keeps poultry asks whether sheep can share the compound without ruining his feed bill.

All three questions come down to the same thing. A ram is not a broiler. It takes longer to put on weight, it eats a different mix of feed, and most of its value is realised on one day at the gate. Fattening one for a festive sale is a short, focused job. It goes well only when the sale date is fixed first and every other step is worked backwards from it.

This article is for people who want to fatten rams for Eid al-Adha, known in Ghana as Sallah, and for families who buy a ram for Christmas or another gathering. It follows the animal from the day you choose it to the day it leaves. Halaal Farms is a day-old chicks hatchery and does not sell rams. We do hear the same questions every year from people who already keep poultry, though, and the answers below are what we would tell any of them. Your veterinary officer and your agric extension officer have the final word for your area.

Pick the ram before you buy the feed

Feed cannot turn a poor animal into a good one. A ram with a crooked jaw, a thin neck or a sore foot will eat well and still look like a bad buy on the day. Spend your first hour at the pen looking at the animal, not at the feed sack.

Look for a deep, square body with a level back and a broad chest. Walk the ram away from you and back again. A sound animal moves without favouring a leg and holds its head up. Check that both eyes are clear and both nostrils are dry. Open the mouth, count the teeth and look for sores on the gums. Run a hand along the belly to find swelling at the navel or groin, and feel each leg for heat or swelling around the hoof.

Ghana gives you two broad kinds of ram for the festive market. The larger rams that come down from the northern savannah tend to carry more frame and more meat across the hindquarters. The smaller West African Dwarf rams from the forest and coastal zones are hardy and easy to keep, but they carry less weight at the same age. Neither is better in every case. Buy the kind your feed supply can handle and your buyers will pay for.

Entire rams and castrated males fatten differently. Entire rams grow fast, but they can fight, they smell strongly in the breeding season, and they are harder to handle in a small pen. A castrated male settles quickly and lays on fat more evenly. Many festive buyers do not mind either, so decide on the basis of how many animals share the pen and whether you plan to keep breeding stock later.

Ask the seller where the ram was reared, what it has been eating and whether it has been dewormed or vaccinated. A good seller answers without fuss. If the answers change every time you ask, leave the animal where it is.

Teeth, age and the question every buyer asks

Most buyers in a ram market want the age before they want the weight. In sheep, age is read from the teeth. A lamb has milk teeth at the front of the lower jaw. Around the age of one year the first pair of permanent incisors comes through, and Ghanaian buyers call that a two-tooth. More pairs follow, so a four-tooth or six-tooth ram is older and often fetches more on the day, provided the teeth are sound and not worn down to the gum.

Check that the front teeth meet the dental pad evenly. A ram whose teeth are loose, broken or splayed will struggle to graze and will lose condition during a long fattening period. Mouth trouble also makes it harder for the animal to chew the fibrous roughage that keeps the rumen working, so do not skip this step because the animal looks healthy from the side.

Age claims in the market are often rough. A seller who says a ram is two years old may be guessing from its size. The teeth are a better guide, and they are the only evidence you can check in front of the seller. If the seller refuses to let you look inside the mouth, that tells you something about the rest of the deal too.

Weigh every week and score the body

A ram you do not weigh is a ram you are guessing about. Get a hanging scale or a platform scale, or use a weighing service at a nearby market if one is available. Weigh at the same time of day, before the morning feed, and write the figure down. Weekly weights show whether the ration is working, which your eye alone will not tell you until the animal is already late.

Body condition scoring is the second tool. Sheep are scored from 1 for very thin to 5 for very fat, read by feeling the spine, the ribs and the loin behind the last rib. A fattening ram should climb the scale slowly and steadily. Moving from a 2 to a 3 over a few weeks is good progress. Staying at a 2 while the feed bin empties means something is wrong with the animal, the trough or the worm burden, and it is time to look harder.

Keep a simple sheet on a nail near the pen. Use the columns below, or copy them into a notebook. Blank rows are for your own figures.

Write the date, the weight, the feed given and any change in dung or appetite. One week with no gain is not a disaster. Two weeks with no gain means you check the worms, the teeth, the water and the quality of the feed before you add a single handful more concentrate.

Roughage first, then the concentrate

The rumen of a sheep is built for fibre. Roughage keeps it working, and concentrate adds the energy that puts on weight. The mistake we hear most often comes from impatience. A neighbour says give him maize and he will be fat in two weeks, so the ram is moved onto a bowl of grain on the first morning. Within a few days it has loose dung, a dull coat and no appetite, and the owner is back asking what went wrong.

A safer plan keeps the rumen in balance:

1. Keep good roughage in the pen at all times, such as fresh guinea grass or dried groundnut haulm. Clean out uneaten material every day so it does not rot.
2. Start the concentrate at a small amount with the morning feed, then raise it gradually over about two weeks.
3. Raise the concentrate only when the ram cleans its bowl at the last feed. If the bowl comes back half full, hold the level for a day.
4. Never leave a full bowl of grain where the ram can gorge on it.
5. Change one ingredient at a time, and write each change on your sheet so you know which one caused a problem.

Fresh grass is a good base, but it is wet and it changes quickly. Cut it fresh each day, wilt it for an hour in the shade if it is very wet after rain, and never feed rank or heated grass that has sat in a heap. A ram that eats well on day one can refuse the same grass on day five if it has gone sour in the sun.

Local feeds that fit a ram ration

Good fattening rations in Ghana are built from feeds most farmers can get close to home. The table lists the ones we see most often, what each does in the ration and what to watch for. Check the quality of every bag and bundle before it goes in the store.

Two practical points come from that table. First, the cheapest feeds are only cheap if they are dry and clean on the day you use them. A bag of bran that has gone mouldy in a damp room costs you more in lost weight than the saving at the market. Second, one protein feed and one energy feed, mixed by weight and fed the same way each day, will beat a mixed bag of whatever was left in the store.

If you are used to mixing poultry feed, the same discipline applies. Our article on mixing your own poultry feed explains why each ingredient is weighed and recorded. Sheep rations benefit from the same habit, and you can use the same sheet and the same scale.

Water, salt and the harmattan dust

Water is the cheapest part of the ration and the one most people forget. Sheep drink less than cattle, but more than most people expect, especially when the roughage is dry. In the north the harmattan takes the moisture out of everything it touches. Fill the drinker twice a day, scrub the trough at least once a week and place it where the sun does not bake the water.

Salt matters too. A salt block or loose salt in a dry, covered box lets the ram lick as its body asks for it. Mineral supplements are useful when the dry-season grass is poor, but choose one made for ruminants and follow the label and your vet's advice on how much to give. Urea is a different matter. Urea-based feeds can poison sheep if the animal gets too much or is not adapted to them, so do not add urea unless an extension officer or vet has shown you how to do it safely.

Harmattan dust gets into feed and sits on the coat. Brush the ram down during the dusty weeks, keep the feed bin lidded and sweep the pen floor. A ram that breathes dust all day coughs, loses condition and wastes the money you put into the bowl.

When the step-up goes too fast

Trouble in a fattening pen usually shows up in the dung before it shows anywhere else. Watch for soft or watery dung, a ram that stands hunched with its back arched, grinds its teeth, or leaves its bowl. A ram that swells on one side of the belly needs attention the same day.

The most common cause is too much concentrate too soon. Grain ferments quickly in the rumen, the acidity rises and the rumen lining and the gut both suffer. Some rams recover after a day or two of dry roughage and no concentrate. Others need the vet. Do not give home remedies on guesswork. Tell the vet exactly what you feed, how much and when each change was made, because that history is what the vet needs to help the animal.

Bloat is a separate emergency. A ram with a swollen left side that is struggling to breathe needs help straight away. Call your nearest veterinary clinic or your district veterinary officer at once. Lush legume pasture and sudden changes of feed are the usual triggers, so bring any new feed in slowly and keep an eye on the ram for the first few days.

The same rule covers the festive rush. Traders sometimes push a ram onto heavy grain in the last week to make it look fuller at the gate. That approach can leave the animal scouring on the day it is most valuable. A steady ration that starts early is the safer bet. Our guide to common sheep diseases in Ghana covers the worm and gut problems that often hide behind a ram that is losing condition.

A worked ration for one ram, with the assumptions shown

The numbers below are a planning example, not a recipe. Replace the assumed weight with your own reading from the scale. The purpose is to see how much feed one animal eats, so you can multiply the figure across the pen and set a budget before the money leaves your hand.

Assume a ram weighing 35 kg. As a planning rule, sheep eat roughly 2 to 3 per cent of their live weight as dry matter each day. Fresh grass and wet feeds carry far more water than dry feed, so the weight you put in the bowl is larger than the dry matter figure. For this example, take 2.5 per cent of body weight. That gives about 0.9 kg of dry matter per day.

Multiply the daily figure by the number of days in the fattening period, then by the number of rams. Turn the kilograms into money using the price your own supplier charges this week. Do not use last season's figure, and do not borrow one from a website. Feed prices move quickly in Ghana, so check the current rate before you commit any cash.

Later in the period the concentrate share can rise towards half the dry matter, but only once the dung is firm and the ram clears its bowl every day. If the weight stops climbing while the feed bill keeps growing, the problem is rarely the ration alone. Check the teeth, the worms and the water before you change the mix again.

Timing the sale for Sallah and Christmas

Eid al-Adha moves backwards through the calendar by roughly eleven days each year, so the date will not match the one you remember from last season. The start of each Islamic month depends on moon sighting, and the National Chief Imam announces the dates for Ghana. Wait for that announcement, and do not build the whole sale plan on a date from a calendar app.

Work backwards from the day you want the ram at its best. Count back the weeks the fattening period needs, then add a buffer of about a week for a sick animal, a slow gain or a late delivery of feed. The result is the day the ram must come into the pen. Write that day at the top of your sheet.

Buyers for Sallah tend to come in the final week or two before the feast, and they want to see the animal fresh and standing well. Christmas buyers often take their animal earlier, so the window is wider but the competition can be thinner. Ask around your local market and among the families and groups who buy at each festival, and set the schedule to match the buyers you actually have. A plan built on hopeful buyers falls over the first time one of them does not turn up. For the poultry side of the same festive calendar, our piece on Ramadan and Eid poultry demand in Ghana shows how the buying weeks line up for birds.

Plan the delivery too. If the animal has to travel to a buyer in another town, count the transport time and the stress of the journey. A ram that has been bounced around on the back of a truck for four hours will not show its best, so keep the journey short where you can.

The costs people forget until the sale

A festive ram carries more costs than the animal itself. Keep a list before you buy, and tick each line off as it is paid. Prices belong to your market and to the month you are buying in, so the table names each cost without putting a figure on it.

Two costs get missed most often. The first is spoilage: feed that goes mouldy in the store or gets trampled into the mud. The second is time. A ram that needs watering, feeding and weighing twice a day takes an hour from someone's day. Count that hour even if nobody is paid for it, because it decides whether the job gets done on a wet morning. If you also keep layers or broilers, the record habits in our poultry record keeping guide transfer directly to a sheet like this one.

Poultry keepers have an advantage here. Sheep and chickens can share a water point and a manure heap, and a store room can hold both feeds if the bins are sealed and clearly labelled. The rule is that no ingredient moves from one feed to the other without a check.

Sheep beside a poultry flock: what to keep apart

Plenty of Ghanaian compounds keep a few chickens and a ram in the same yard, and it can work well. The feed is the first thing that has to stay apart. Many commercial poultry feeds contain additives that suit birds but are unsafe for other species. Store poultry feed in sealed bins out of the ram's reach, and read the label on every bag before any of it goes near the sheep.

Manure is the upside. Ram dung, mixed with dry litter and left to rot down, makes a useful soil conditioner for maize and vegetables. The routine is the same as for poultry litter: keep it dry, turn it, and let it sit before it goes on the field. Our guide on using poultry manure as fertiliser covers timing and rates, and most of the principles carry across to sheep dung.

Some people also grow forage for both animals on the same plot. Groundnut haulm from a dry-season harvest can feed the ram and the layers, and it helps to know how much to set aside for each. Our article on groundnut haulm as poultry forage sets out how to dry and store it, which works just as well for sheep rations.

If your chicken routine is not running smoothly yet, get that right first. Sheep add work, and a flock that is already stretched will not cope with a ram on top. Begin with the birds you can feed and water every day, then add a ram when the routine runs without drama. If the flock side of your plan needs building first, start with our day-old chicks range. The current starting prices sit on the prices page, and the order form takes it from there. To talk the sharing of labour through, WhatsApp +233 24 915 1503.

Checklist before the rams go to the gate

Run through this list the day before the buyer arrives. Anything you cannot tick is a question to settle with your vet or extension officer before the ram leaves the pen. The housing and water side of the pen is covered in our sheep housing and feeding guide, which is worth reading before the animals arrive.

• Sale date confirmed against the official moon-sighting announcement, with a buffer week built in.
• Weight and body score recorded on arrival day and every week after.
• Teeth checked and age noted for each ram.
• Concentrate stepped up over about two weeks, with notes on dung and appetite.
• Roughage always available, dry and clean.
• Salt lick and clean water in place, and the drinker scrubbed.
• Poultry feed stored in sealed, labelled bins that the rams cannot reach.
• Vet or extension officer has examined the animals at least once.
• Buyer's collection day and route agreed in writing, with a phone number for each side.

Questions farmers ask