Short answer: A town yard can carry a small layer flock as a side income if the Assembly allows it, the neighbours agree and the feed is paid for before the eggs are counted. For most compounds, that means about a dozen layers, a weekly egg round at a fixed price and a monthly notebook that shows the cash left after feed. Plan the end of the flock as carefully as its start.
Key takeaways
- Check the Assembly's poultry bylaw in writing, and agree the plan with the neighbours closest to the coop.
- Choose layers over broilers for most town yards, and plan the cockerels before the chicks arrive.
- Size the flock to the usable yard space, with about twelve layers as a sensible side-business size.
- Work out the monthly feed bill first, then judge the egg income against it, not the gross sales.
- Keep a monthly notebook and set an end date for the flock before the birds get old.
How many hens a town compound can carry before it turns into a problem
How many hens can a town compound carry before the smell, the noise and the flies start to cost you more than the eggs earn? That is the question we hear most from people with a yard in Kasoa, Kumasi or a regional town, and it is the right one to ask first. Most of the answer is not about the hens. It is about the space, the neighbours and the rules, in that order.
A side business in a town is a different animal from a farm. You have a few birds, a few square metres, and a day job or a shop that takes most of your hours. The money is small, the margin for mistakes is small, and one bad month of smell can end the whole thing. Plan for the small version first, and grow only if the small version pays its way for a full year.
Check the Assembly's rules before you buy anything
Before the first chick arrives, find out what your local Assembly allows. Each Metropolitan, Municipal or District Assembly sets its own rules on keeping livestock inside built-up areas, and those rules can cover the number of birds, the distance from the house, the cockerel and the enclosure. Ask the environmental health office for the bylaw in writing, and keep a copy in the house.
Do not assume that because a neighbour keeps birds, you can too. A rule that is not enforced this year can be enforced after a complaint next year, and the complaint usually comes from the house next to yours. Ask the people who live closest to you what they think before you build. A quiet conversation over the fence costs nothing, and it is much cheaper than a notice from the Assembly.
If your compound is shared with other families, agree the plan with them in writing. Who cleans the coop, who collects the eggs, and what happens if one family objects. A shared yard with no agreement is where most urban flocks get into trouble, long before the birds do.
Our minimum is a box of 50, which is a lot for a town yard
We should be straight about this, because it matters for a town flock. The smallest lot we sell is a box of 50 day-old chicks. On a commercial farm that is a sensible unit. In a yard with room for a dozen hens, it is several times what you need on day one.
A mixed-sex hatch also gives you roughly half cockerels. A town compound cannot keep a flock of cockerels, and most of them will need to be sold or eaten young. That is not a reason to avoid chicks. It is a reason to plan the cockerels before the box arrives, so that you are not left with ten roosters crowing at five in the morning.
If you want hens only, there are two sensible routes. You can buy grown pullets from a local seller who has birds at point of lay, or join a small group order with other people in the area and split a box. Our guide to cooperatives and group buying sets out how a shared order works in practice. Either way, check that the birds you buy are the type you want before you pay.
If you do buy a box from us, you can see our layer day-old chicks and the current starting prices, and we deliver as set out on our delivery page. Decide what you will do with the surplus before the chicks are in the box, not after.
Layers, not broilers, for most town yards
In a town yard, we would almost always choose layers over broilers. A broiler grows fast, eats a great deal, produces a lot of wet droppings in its last three weeks, and has to go out at a set weight. A layer gives you eggs most days, can stay on the place for a year or more, and goes to a buyer only when she stops laying.
The droppings are the real issue. A broiler batch in a small yard means a large heap of wet litter in the last fortnight, in the rains, next to someone's kitchen window. A layer flock of a dozen produces less manure, spread over a longer time, and the litter can be managed with a daily scrape and a weekly clean. Smell is the thing that ends urban flocks, and layers give you more control over it.
There is one case where broilers make sense in town: a short, planned batch of birds sold to a buyer who has already agreed the date and the weight. That is a finishing job, not a side business. Plan it as one, and clean the house out the same week the birds leave.
How much yard a flock really needs, in plain terms
The table below is our rough guide, not a rule. It assumes the flock lives in a covered coop with a small run, the cleaning happens every few days, and the neighbours have agreed to the plan. A yard with a neighbour's wall close to the coop needs fewer birds than the figures suggest, and a yard with a wide open back needs fewer still if the run is poorly drained.
| Usable yard space | Realistic flock | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Under about 30 m² | Up to 4 hens, with a covered coop and no run | Eggs for the household; a side income is hard to build here |
| About 30 to 60 m² | 6 to 10 layers in a coop with a small run | Eggs for the household and a small weekly sale |
| About 60 to 100 m² | 12 to 20 layers with a run and a proper shed | A real side income that needs a weekly routine |
| Over about 100 m² | More than 20 layers | Starts to look like a small farm; check the Assembly rules on flock size |
Use the usable area, not the area of the whole compound. The room that the family walks through, the kitchen yard and the washing line do not count. Measure the space the birds can actually reach and keep out of the walkways. For most town compounds, that leaves a surprisingly small patch.
Buying feed for twelve hens without tying up the cash
A flock of twelve layers in a town yard is the most common size we would suggest, so let us work through its feed. A laying hen eats somewhere around 110 to 120 grams of layer mash a day in the warm months, a little more when the weather is cool. Twelve hens at 115 grams a day take about 1.4 kilograms of feed a day. That is about 41 kilograms a month, which is roughly one and a half bags of 25 kilograms.
Here is the part that catches people. Feed is the big cost in a small flock, and it is paid for every month whether the eggs sell or not. If a 25 kilogram bag costs you a figure we will call B, the monthly feed bill is about 1.6 times B. At a bag price of GH₵200, that is around GH₵320 a month for twelve hens. The actual price in your town will be different, so put your own figure in.
Buy by the bag, not by the scoop. A scoop-based purchase looks cheaper per kilogram, but it hides the weight and the quality, and it usually means you end up buying more often at a higher total. Keep the bag in a dry, closed container inside the house, and buy when you have one bag left, not when the bin is empty.
Our own advice on feed is the same as on the farm: feed the hens the layer ration and treat scraps as a treat. A hen fed mostly on kitchen leftovers lays less, and the eggs come out smaller and less consistent. Our guide to how much feed a chicken eats goes through the numbers for every stage.
Selling to the people you can walk to: a week of egg rounds
In town, your buyers are close. The woman who runs the chop bar at the corner, the two families on the next street, the staff in the office block, the people who already buy from the kiosk by the station. Their eggs are your first market, and they are the easiest to keep. Walk the route once a week and leave the crates where they expect them.
The sum for twelve hens at a 75 per cent lay rate is simple. Nine eggs a day, which is 63 eggs a week. That is two full crates of 30, with three spare eggs for breakages and for the household. At our table-egg list price of GH₵50 a crate, two crates a week come to GH₵100, or about GH₵430 a month across four and a bit weeks.
- Monday: collect, grade, and pack two crates with the spare eggs held back for the house.
- Tuesday: deliver to the chop bar and the two regular households.
- Thursday: check the count, and text the buyers if the week will be short.
- Saturday: clean the coop, weigh the feed bag and write the weekly figures in the book.
Sell at a fixed price, and keep it the same for every buyer in the same week. A town buyer who finds a different price next door will not stay quiet about it. Our guide to pricing chicken and eggs sets out how to set a price you can defend.
The side-income sum, with the feed taken out first
Take the gross and subtract the feed before you celebrate anything. Using the figures from the last two sections: about GH₵430 a month in egg sales at list, and about 1.6 times your bag price in feed. If the bag costs GH₵200, you keep about GH₵110 a month before you have paid for the crates, the medicine, the vaccines, the transport and the day-old chick that died in the first week.
That is not a reason to stop. It is a reason to be honest about what the side business is. A twelve-hen flock in a town yard usually pays for itself and buys a few useful things. It rarely replaces a salary. If your sum shows less than you expected, look at the feed price first, then at the lay rate, and only then at the price you are charging.
Keep the figures in a notebook, one page a month. Write the eggs laid, the eggs sold, the feed bought, the other costs and the cash in hand. After three months, the notebook tells you more than any guess. Our egg business numbers show the same logic at farm scale, if you ever want to compare.
Need chicks for your next batch?
Send breed, number and town. We reply with price, hatch date and delivery cost in writing.
Flies, smell and dust from a town compound
Flies are the first complaint from neighbours, and they come from wet droppings left too long. A coop that is scraped every two or three days, with dry litter and a lid on the manure bin, has very few flies. A coop left for a week in the rains has a great many. The fix is not a spray. It is the scrape, the dry bedding and the bin.
In the dry season the problem is dust. Hens scratch, the litter dries, and the dust blows onto the washing and into the kitchen. Dampen the run lightly in the morning, keep the coop door closed on windy days and move the dusty litter to a sealed bin rather than leaving it in a heap by the wall.
- Scrape the droppings boards every two or three days, and sooner in the rains.
- Keep the litter dry, and top it up with clean material when it starts to cake.
- Keep the manure in a lidded bin, away from the kitchen and the well.
- Move the manure out of the compound at least once a month, or compost it in a pit with a cover.
- Keep feed in a closed container, so rats and flies do not treat the coop as their food store.
The rat problem in a town is bigger than most people expect, and it follows the feed. For traps and bait, see our rodent and snake control guide, which is written for coops of this size.
The hours a town side business really takes, and who does them
Nobody budgets the hours. A flock of twelve takes about twenty minutes in the morning for feed, water and the eggs, and about an hour once a week for the coop clean, the bin, the count and the deliveries. In the rains, add time for the extra scraping and for dry litter. In the hot months, add time for water, because a hen drinks a great deal more when it is hot and the bowl runs dry faster than you expect.
Who does the work matters as much as how long it takes. If the side business depends on one person who travels for work two weeks a month, the eggs will fail in those two weeks, and the buyers will find another supplier. Decide who covers the days you are away, and tell the buyers who to call.
A flock that needs twenty minutes a day is a hobby with an income. A flock that needs an hour a day is a second job, and it should be priced as one. Keep an honest figure for your own hours and set it against the notebook.
When to grow from twelve birds, and when to stop
Grow only when twelve birds have paid for their feed, their medicine and their crates for a full year, and when the yard and the rules allow it. The first sign of a flock that is ready to grow is a buyer who asks for more than you have, and a yard that does not smell after the rains. If either one is missing, stay where you are.
Stop, or at least shrink, when the neighbours object in a way you cannot settle, when the Assembly enforces a rule you cannot meet, or when the hours start to cost you the job that pays the bills. A town side business should never be the thing that takes the peace out of a family or a street. The eggs are not worth that.
We would rather see a town keeper with a steady dozen hens and a clean yard than one with thirty birds and a complaint in the Assembly office. Growth is easy to start and difficult to undo.
Ending the flock without losing the last of the money
Every laying flock ends. Lay falls off after the first year or two, and the hens that stop laying still eat feed every day. Decide the end date before the flock gets old. Keep a running sale in the calendar, so that the spent hens go to a buyer while they still have some value, rather than waiting until they have stopped laying and become a cost.
Spent hens are a different product from the young birds you sold as eggs, and they sell for less by weight. Our guide to spent layers covers what buyers want and how to price the old birds. In a town, the simplest route is usually to sell them to a regular buyer or a local market seller, and to tell the Assembly nothing, unless a rule asks you to.
Replace the flock in stages, not all at once. Bring in a small group of new birds before the older group drops below half its lay, so that the eggs keep coming and the coop stays in use.
Checklist before the first hen arrives in town
- Get the Assembly's bylaw on poultry in writing, and keep a copy in the house.
- Talk to the neighbours who live closest to the coop, and agree the plan.
- Measure the usable yard space, not the whole compound.
- Choose layers unless you have a planned, short finishing job.
- Decide what happens to the cockerels before the chicks arrive.
- Work out the monthly feed bill from the bag price in your town.
- Plan the weekly egg round and the fixed price for every buyer.
- Keep a monthly notebook of eggs, feed, costs and cash in hand.
- Name the person who covers the flock when you are away.
- Set the date you will sell the spent hens, before the flock gets old.
Measure the yard, write the number down, and bring it to us on +233 24 915 1503. We will say plainly whether a dozen hens fit. Our FAQ page covers the rest of the basics.
Questions farmers ask
Can I keep chickens in my compound in a town in Ghana?
Often you can, but the rules differ from one Assembly to the next. Ask your local environmental health office for the bylaw on poultry in built-up areas, including limits on the number of birds, the distance from the house and the rules on cockerels. Get the answer in writing, and talk to the neighbours who live closest before you build the coop.
How many hens can I keep in a small urban yard?
It depends on the usable space, not the whole compound. A yard of 30 to 60 square metres can usually hold a flock of six to ten layers with a coop and a small run. Around 12 layers is a sensible size for a side business in a yard of 60 to 100 square metres. Check the Assembly's flock limit before you buy, because it can be lower than the space allows.
Is a town side business from backyard hens worth it?
It can cover its own feed and a little more, but it rarely replaces a salary. Twelve layers at a good lay rate sell around two crates a week, and the feed bill for that flock often takes more than half the gross. Keep a monthly notebook of eggs, feed and other costs, and judge the business on the cash left after feed, not on the gross sales.
What do I do with a box of 50 chicks if my yard only holds a dozen hens?
Decide the cockerel plan and the sale plan before the box arrives. A mixed hatch comes out roughly half cockerels, and a town yard can keep only the hens it has room for. Either sell the surplus pullets as point-of-lay birds to a buyer who wants them, or split the box with a small group of households. Get the pullet and cockerel split agreed in writing before you pay, and keep the batch record with the box.
What feed should urban hens eat?
Feed a layer ration as the main diet, and treat kitchen scraps as a small extra. Hens fed mostly on leftovers lay fewer and less consistent eggs. Keep the feed in a closed container away from rats, and buy by the bag so you know the weight and the quality you are paying for.
How do I stop the smell and the flies in a town coop?
Scrape the droppings boards every two or three days, and more often in the rains. Keep the litter dry, store the manure in a lidded bin away from the kitchen and the well, and move it out of the compound regularly. Most smell and flies come from wet, neglected litter, not from the birds themselves.
When should I stop keeping hens in town?
Stop, or shrink the flock, when the neighbours cannot be settled, when the Assembly enforces a rule you cannot meet, or when the hours start to cost you more than the eggs earn. A side business should never disturb a family or a street. Plan the end date in advance, and sell the spent hens to a regular buyer while they still have value.
