Day-Old Chicks for Sale in Gweru

Most people buying chicks in Gweru are buying for the first time.

This page tells you what to buy, what changes the price, and how to order without the mistakes that cost first-timers half their batch.

What you can buy

Broilers are meat birds. They are ready in about six weeks. They grow fast but they need good care and bought feed.

Layers are egg birds. They cost more per chick. They lay their first egg at about five months, then lay for a year or more.

Road runners are indigenous free-range birds. They grow slowly but find much of their own food and sell at a better price.

Not sure which? Read broilers vs road runners.

What changes the price

Chick prices move. They follow:

• The cost of feed
• Import costs and the exchange rate
• The season

Prices go up from about September, when everyone is preparing birds for December. They are cheapest in the quiet months after January.

Quantity matters too. A hundred chicks costs less per bird than twenty.

When you compare two prices, check if delivery is included. A cheap chick you must fetch from Harare is not cheap.

Check the chicks before you take them

You are allowed to look in the box. Do it.

A good chick is:

• Alert and moving
• Dry and fluffy
• Standing properly on its legs
• Clean and healed at the navel

Leave it if the chicks are wet, quiet and still, splay-legged, or much smaller than the rest. Small weak chicks do not catch up.

Also ask which vaccinations were done at the hatchery, and which ones you must do. Marek’s is usually done at day old. Newcastle and Gumboro are usually yours to give in the first three weeks.

Collection

Collecting is cheapest and you control the journey.

Come early in the morning. Chicks travel better when it is cool. Early collection also means they reach a warm brooder with daylight left, so you can watch them settle.

In the car:

• Carry the box on the seat, never in a closed boot
• Do not stop for other errands
• Never leave the box in a parked car in the sun

More chicks die from heat in a parked car than from almost anything else on collection day.

Outside Gweru? See our Midlands delivery routes for Kwekwe, Shurugwi, Zvishavane, Mvuma and Gokwe.

Get the brooder ready first

Chicks cannot keep themselves warm. For the first three to four weeks, you are doing the job of the hen.

Before the chicks arrive you need:

• A clean, dry space
• A heat source, switched on hours before
• Bedding a few centimetres deep
• Drinkers filled with clean water
• Starter feed

A cold first night costs you birds before you have fed them anything.

If load shedding is a problem where you are, read brooding without electricity before you order. Our brooding guide covers the first two weeks.

Work out the full cost first

The chicks are the cheapest part of a batch. Feed costs far more.

Many people buy a hundred chicks, then run out of money for feed in week four. They sell small birds at a loss.

Before you order, work through what it costs to raise 100 broilers.

If the numbers do not work, buy fewer chicks. Fifty birds fed properly beat a hundred birds half-fed.

How to order

Tell us:

• The breed you want
• How many
• The week you need them

We will confirm which hatch we can put you on.

Give us as much notice as you can. Chicks are hatched to order, not kept in stock. The weeks before December book out first.

Still have questions? Our FAQ page answers a hundred of them.