Broiler weight chart by age: target weights week by week

What is the broiler weight chart by age?

The broiler weight chart by age is the target live body weight a healthy broiler should reach at each week of its life, starting at about 40-45 grams at hatch and finishing around 2.2-2.6 kg by day 40-42 for a typical Indian market bird. It exists because weight gain in a broiler is not a straight line — a bird's growth rate accelerates through the first month and only starts to level off near market age, so a single "average weight" number is close to useless without the age attached to it.

The chart matters for a simple reason: body weight is the one number that tells you, batch after batch, whether every other input — feed, temperature, health — actually turned into growth. A shed can look calm, feed can be disappearing from the bin, and a batch can still be a week behind on weight if something upstream went wrong two weeks ago. Catching that gap early is the difference between a small correction and a batch that reaches market underweight and over budget.

Below is the full week-by-week target weight chart, the average daily gain (ADG) that goes with it, what to do when a batch falls off the curve, and how continuous weighing catches the problem days before a manual scale check would.

Broiler weight chart by age (day one to market weight)

These are typical target ranges for standard commercial broiler breeds under normal Indian shed management, aiming for a 2.2-2.6 kg market bird around day 40-42. Treat them as a planning baseline — breed, season, feed quality and sex-based growth differences will shift the exact number a little either way; what matters most is whether your own batch is tracking the same shape of curve.

• Day 1 (hatch): 40-45 g.
• Week 1 (day 7): 150-180 g.
• Week 2 (day 14): 400-480 g.
• Week 3 (day 21): 750-900 g.
• Week 4 (day 28): 1,200-1,450 g.
• Week 5 (day 35): 1,700-2,050 g.
• Week 6 (day 42): 2,200-2,600 g, typical Indian market weight.

Average daily gain (ADG): the number behind the chart

Average daily gain is the weight added per bird per day, and it is what actually drives the chart above — the total weight at any week is just the ADG for each prior day added together. ADG starts low, around 15-20 grams a day in week one, and climbs to 60-75 grams a day by week five and six as the bird's frame and appetite both mature.

ADG is more useful than the weekly weight alone because it shows a slowdown the moment it starts, rather than after a full week has already been lost. A batch whose ADG drops from 55 g/day to 40 g/day in week four is falling behind before the week-4 weighing would show it as a problem — by the time the total weight looks low, the growth check has already happened and cannot be fully recovered.

• Week 1: roughly 15-20 g/day average gain.
• Week 2: roughly 30-40 g/day.
• Week 3: roughly 45-60 g/day.
• Week 4: roughly 55-70 g/day.
• Week 5-6: roughly 60-75 g/day, tapering slightly as the bird approaches market weight.

How to weigh correctly, not just often

A weight chart is only as reliable as the sample it is checked against. Weighing the five easiest-to-catch birds near the shed entrance every time gives a biased, usually inflated, number because the slowest and sickest birds are the hardest to catch and get left out.

Weigh a random sample of at least 1-2% of the flock, or a minimum of 50-100 birds in a large shed, drawn from several points across the floor — not just near the entrance or the feeder line. Weigh at the same time of day each week, ideally before the first feeding, since crop fill can swing an individual bird's weight by several percent. Record the average, the spread (lightest to heaviest), and the percentage of birds more than 10% below target — that spread tells you about flock uniformity, which matters as much as the average for how evenly the batch will sell.

What it means when a batch falls off the weight curve

A batch tracking a few percent below target in any single week is worth watching; one that is 10% or more below target, or has been slipping for two consecutive weeks, needs a cause found immediately:

• Brooding temperature off-target in week 1-2 — a chilled or overheated start diverts energy away from growth and the lost week rarely comes back; see our broiler brooding temperature chart.
• Feed intake below the expected curve — check feeder space, water availability and feed quality against our broiler feed consumption chart before assuming the feed formulation itself is the problem.
• Heat stress in the shed, which cuts feed intake and therefore weight gain, often worse than the thermometer alone suggests once humidity is added in.
• Disease or subclinical infection, especially coccidiosis or a respiratory issue, which slows growth days before mortality rises.
• Poor flock uniformity from uneven brooding or overcrowding, which shows up as a wide weight spread even when the average looks acceptable.
• High stocking density in the second half of the cycle, which restricts feeder and drinker access for the weaker birds in the group.

Manual weighing vs continuous weight tracking

A hand scale checked once a week tells you where the batch stood on the day you checked it — it says nothing about the six days in between, and by the time a weekly weighing shows a batch is behind, the growth check that caused it may already be a week old. Load-cell platform scales placed in the shed can log sample weights automatically and far more often, catching a slowdown in ADG within a day or two instead of at the next scheduled weighing.

Continuous tracking also removes the sampling bias that comes from a worker grabbing whichever five birds are easiest to catch — an automated or supervised larger sample, taken consistently at the same time and shed locations each check, gives a number you can actually compare batch to batch.

• Manual weighing: a small, sometimes biased sample, checked weekly, with results reconciled by hand.
• Continuous tracking: a larger and more consistent sample, checked automatically at set intervals, compared against the age-adjusted curve without waiting for someone to do the math.

How IoT monitoring supports the weight curve

Body weight does not exist in isolation — it is the outcome of brooding temperature, feed intake, water access and shed air quality all working together. An IoT monitoring system tracks those upstream conditions continuously and flags the moment one of them drifts off-target for the flock's current age, so the cause of a slipping batch is visible days before it would show up on the scale.

That is a different job from weighing the birds itself, but it is what keeps the weight curve on track in the first place — see how temperature, humidity, ammonia and feed tracking work together in our guide to IoT for poultry farms, and how a slipping weight curve often shows up alongside rising deaths in our poultry mortality rate guide.

Keep this batch on the weight curve

A weight chart only helps if the shed conditions behind it are actually being watched every day, not just at the weekly weighing. See how automated temperature, feed and shed monitoring fit together for Indian broiler sheds on our poultry farm monitoring page, or book a meeting with the MD to talk through your shed size and target market weight.