Chickens – March-April 2026

Summary

Chickens magazine's March/April 2026 issue (Vol. 17, No. 2) leads with Rebecca Scott's brooder blueprint — a 24-inch cardboard ring, 90-to-95-degree first-week heat, a 250-watt lamp hung 20 inches up — plus vet Victoria Robbins' case against routine deworming, a 21-day incubation calendar, and Jaclyn Krymowski's turkey primer, where each tom eats 100 pounds of feed.

This is the spring-chick issue. Rebecca Scott's cover feature builds a working brooder from a 24-inch cardboard strip — 6 to 12 square inches per chick, a 20-foot guard holding 50 birds — and sets first-week heat at 90 to 95 degrees, dropping 5 degrees weekly. Wendy Bedwell-Wilson follows with the full 21-day incubation cycle, sourcing extension specialists Jesse Lyons of the University of Missouri and Penn State's Phillip Clauer for temperatures, humidity targets and turning schedules.

The health coverage is the strongest journalism here. Bruce Ingram interviews veterinarian Victoria Robbins of Roanoke, Virginia, who argues against routine deworming — dosing asymptomatic birds breeds antiparasitic resistance — and names fenbendazole (Safe-Guard) as the only FDA-approved option, with no egg withdrawal. Heather Levin's Pullet to Layer column times the first egg at 18 to 24 weeks, and Ana Hotaling explains why mail-order chicks die in their first 24 hours and how to get a store replacement.

Homestead builds fill the back half: Jordan Charbonneau's 8-by-24-foot West Virginia coop with hayloft, feed room and split pasture; Rachel Hurd Anger's chore calendar sorted by day, week, month and season; September Morn's poultry garden of greens, squash and sprouted wheat; and Jaclyn Krymowski's turkey primer, where each tom consumes 100 pounds of feed before reaching market weight.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover Story

p.14 · Brooding Your Babies

Rebecca Scott starts with location: a draft-free room holding about 75 degrees Fahrenheit, away from the existing flock. Her enclosure is a 24-inch cardboard circle — 6 to 12 square inches per chick, with a 20-foot guard sufficing for 50 birds — expanded as chicks feather out. She specifies two feeders and one waterer per 50 chicks, marbles in the drinker to stop drowning, a 250-watt heat lamp hung 20 inches above the litter, and a backup heat source with spare bulbs. Start at 90 to 95 degrees, cut 5 degrees weekly, and power the brooder one to two days before chicks arrive so temperatures are verified.

▸ Chick Season

p.50 · Ready, Set, Hatch!

Wendy Bedwell-Wilson opens with 7-year-old 4-H'er Dillon Pascale of Albuquerque watching his first pip, then gets technical with extension poultry specialists Jesse Lyons, Phillip Clauer and Melvin Hamre. Store fertile eggs at 45 to 55 degrees — a household refrigerator is too cold — and set them within three to four days. Forced-air incubators run 99 to 99.5 degrees; still-air units 101, with humidity near 60 percent rising to 65-70 for the hatch. Turn eggs three times daily, marking X and O in pencil, and stop for the final three days. Never help a pipping chick; keep the incubator shut until the hatch completes.

p.10 · Chicken Checkup: Pullet to Layer

Heather Levin times the first egg at 18 to 24 weeks — Golden Comets and Amber Sex Links beat heritage Wyandottes, with Silkies later still. Transition feed over several weeks from 75 percent chick starter to layer ration, and offer oyster shell in a separate dish so hens self-regulate calcium. Watch for squatting, reddening combs and nesting-box interest, and expect freak first eggs: fairy eggs, shell-less eggs, irregular schedules. Her rule for the transition: no coop renovations, no new flockmates, no first-time free-ranging — stability beats stimulation while birds come into lay.

p.6 · Flock Talk: When A Chick Dies

Ana Hotaling reconstructs why a healthy-looking feed-store chick can die within 24 hours: transit stress in unheated postal trucks, an immature digestive tract, pasty butt that cements the vent shut, and store staff who skip feed, water and heat. She tells you what to do after a death — contact the store manager immediately and ask for a free replacement chick, since most will provide one. Replace the bird fast, while survivors are young enough not to notice a newcomer. Check every new chick's vent daily during week one and clean pasting right away.

▸ Health

p.24 · Worm Worries

Bruce Ingram found worms in a dying hen's droppings and took his questions to Victoria Robbins of the Avian and Exotic Pet Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia. Her position: deworm only when fecal screening shows a high parasite burden, because routine dosing of asymptomatic birds breeds antiparasitic resistance. Fenbendazole (Safe-Guard) is the single FDA-approved chicken dewormer and carries no egg withdrawal when used on label. She also covers mites, lice and fly strike — remove every maggot alive, flush wounds with Betadine, and skip hydrogen peroxide. Ask your vet for fecal testing twice early in the year before dosing anything.

▸ Coop & Homestead

p.32 · My Dream Coop

Jordan Charbonneau's 8-by-24-foot West Virginia build splits into a 96-square-foot chicken room for about 24 birds and a dedicated feed room — a feature almost no published coop plans include, born of storing feed on a porch until a raccoon pried a lid off. The hayloft holds $4-per-bale field hay (versus $10-plus in winter) and insulates the birds from the metal roof; a porch keeps keeper and tools dry; two pastures rotate off front and back exits. Recycled storm-damaged roofing cut costs further. Steal the feed-room idea before anything else.

p.44 · Chicken Chore Guide

Rachel Hurd Anger sorts flock care into daily, weekly, monthly, twice-annual and annual tasks. Daily: feed and fresh water morning and dusk, gather eggs several times to keep them clean, and strip the worst bedding under the roost. Weekly: full bedding change and raking the run to break the worm-and-parasite cycle. Twice a year: scrub with dish soap, dust with food-grade diatomaceous earth, and refresh the dust bath with peat moss, wood ash and sand. She tells you to set calendar alerts for the infrequent jobs so the six-month scrub actually happens.

p.60 · Planting for Poultry

September Morn fences a chicken garden with 4-foot mesh and rotates birds through quarters before they graze plants to stubble. Her plant list runs from mesclun mixes and cabbage to zucchini left to overgrow for protein-rich seeds, winter squash wiped with mouthwash to store up to a year, and nasturtiums that pull aphids and squash bugs away from vegetables. Sidebars give a quart-jar method for sprouting wheat — feed at the half-inch leaf stage — and hanging dry grain bundles for winter exercise. Sow a row of grains now and snip 4-inch grass tips straight to the run.

p.74 · Time for Turkeys

Jaclyn Krymowski frames turkeys as a 16-to-22-week spring-to-market project. Poults need 1 square foot of brooder space each, a 28 percent protein starter medicated against coccidiosis, and a red heat bulb to curb pecking. Budget feed honestly: a tom consumes roughly 100 pounds by market weight, a hen about 60. Keep turkeys in separate housing and pasture from chickens — shared facilities spread disease — and skip roosts for market birds to avoid breast blisters. The Orlopp Bronze gets a nod as a premium broad-breasted hybrid. Order poults only after pricing feed and building separate quarters.

p.30 · One Cool Coop

Nicole Blake inherited her brother's welded-steel-frame coop in Lee's Summit, Missouri, and retrofitted it: PVC-pipe feeders mounted on a solid end wall, an automatic outside door using a light plastic cutting board that cost $5, an internal auto-door to the nest boxes, a Wi-Fi camera for checking the flock, and kitty-litter boxes filled with soil as indoor dust baths. Foldable wheels let her roll the whole structure to fresh ground. A cheap plastic cutting board turns out to be a safe, light auto-door material worth copying.

▸ Regulars & Readers

p.4 · Breed Profile: White Faced Black Spanish

One of the oldest Mediterranean breeds and reportedly the first chicken in America, the White Faced Black Spanish was a top U.S. breed from roughly 1825 to 1895 before hardier birds displaced it. Cocks weigh 8 pounds; hens lay large pure-white eggs and rarely go broody. That dramatic white face takes a full year and one molt to develop, and the breed runs noisy, curious and high-maintenance — it sits on the Livestock Conservancy's Critical list. A fit for small-scale urban egg sellers who don't mind volume.

p.48 · In the Kitchen: Bacon Ranch Egg Salad

Lori Rice's recipe serves four to six from eight hard-boiled eggs, three bacon slices, green onions and fresh dill, bound with equal parts mayonnaise and sour cream plus garlic powder. It's positioned for spring brunches and potlucks — the payoff of a productive laying season. Chop the eggs bite-size, fold in the dressing, then salt to taste at the end. Double the bacon if you want it to survive a potluck table.

p.66 · Chicken Chat: Henny Penny

Carrie Miller of Miller Micro Farm in Kinsman, Ohio, chronicles a hen found unable to bear weight on one leg. Three weeks of recovery in the goat barn — puppy pads, straw, and company from barn cats and 20 retired dairy goats — turned her into Miss Henny Penny, the barn chicken who sleeps spooned by a goat named Mabel and pays rent by laying in the hay bales. The practical nugget: reintroduce a recovering hen after dark to reduce pecking, and expect her to choose her own flock.

p.40 · Best of Cluck Photo Contest

The annual reader photo contest runs five categories — Cutest Chick, Best Hen, Best Rooster, Best Group and Coolest Coop — plus a grand prize of a $100 Murray McMurray Hatchery gift certificate. Entries are JPEGs shot at highest resolution, minimum 3-by-5 inches at 300 dpi, emailed separately per category with a 100-word note; three photos per category maximum. Category sponsors include Buff Clucks. The deadline is March 24, 2026 — set a reminder before your best shot sits unmailed on your phone.

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Editor's Take

The veterinary reporting sets this issue apart: Ingram's interview with Victoria Robbins delivers drug names, resistance data and a no-egg-withdrawal fact most hobby publications skip, and the incubation feature quotes three extension poultry specialists with numbers you can act on. The rest is uneven. Full-page ads for pluckers, coops and herbal supplements chop the features into fragments, the photography leans heavily on stock, and pieces like the Storefront product round-up exist mainly to move merchandise. Buy it if you are hatching or brooding for the first time this spring; a fifth-year keeper will finish the health pages and move on.

Strengths
• Robbins interview names actual drugs, resistance risks and withdrawal rules
• Incubation guide cites three university extension poultry specialists
• Dream Coop article includes real costs, like $4-per-bale field hay

Weaknesses
• Full-page product ads repeatedly interrupt feature articles
• Storefront round-up and stock photography feel like filler

Verdict: Recommended — Vet-sourced health advice and two solid chick-season guides outweigh the heavy ad load for new keepers.