Chicken Coloring Pages

Every farmyard has a boss, and it is usually a hen. These chicken coloring pages spend a day in the life of the flock: the rooster up at dawn, the hens busy with their nests and their grain, and the chicks getting into everything.

The roosters are the showiest. One crows on a wooden fence as the sun comes up, another on a hay bale in the barn, one struts through the garden pots, one stands proudly on a stone wall and one rides an old tractor. A rooster tops a weather vane on the barn roof, and an ornate rooster is drawn with every feather patterned.

The hens keep the farm running. A hen sits on her straw nest, another on a nest box looking very grumpy about being disturbed, and one has made her nest in a hanging flower basket on the porch. Hens lead their chicks through the farmyard puddles and down a country lane, spread their wings over them in the rain, peck grain beside a farmer's boots, take a dust bath, pick at fallen apples in the orchard, sit in a basket of decorated eggs, perch on a bicycle in the barn and on a gatepost while a tractor works the field behind. There is a coop yard with feeders and apple trees, a wooden coop with its ramp and nest boxes, and a snowy farmyard in winter.

The chicks have the funniest pages. One hatches from its egg, one wears a sun hat in the vegetable patch, one sleeps in a teacup on the windowsill, one chases a grasshopper, one wanders through a greenhouse, one rides on a sleeping dog and one on a patient cat's head. A group huddles under the heat lamp of a brooder, and a round cartoon chick hugs a spotted egg. A folk art rooster and hen face each other among hearts and flowers, and mandalas are built from wheat, eggs and feathers.

Hen, rooster, chick

It helps to know who is who on the page:

• A hen is an adult female. She lays eggs, with or without a rooster around, often close to one a day in spring and summer.
• A rooster is an adult male. He has a bigger comb and wattles, long curved tail feathers and pointed neck feathers called hackles, and he crows, at dawn but also whenever he feels like it.
• A chick is a baby. A chick hatches about 21 days after a hen starts sitting on her eggs, and it can walk and peck within hours.

A hen that wants to sit on her eggs is called broody, and she can get quite cross about being moved, which is exactly the look on the grumpy hen's face.

Why chickens take dust baths

One page shows a hen fluffed up in a hollow of dry earth, flinging dust over her back. It looks odd but it is how chickens keep clean: the dust soaks up extra oil in their feathers and helps get rid of tiny mites. A flock will dig the same dusty spot for years.

Choosing chicken colors

Chickens come in many more colors than white, and picking a real breed makes a page more fun:

• Rhode Island Red: a deep reddish brown, almost mahogany, with a darker tail.
• Buff Orpington: soft golden yellow all over.
• Barred Rock: black and white stripes across every feather, like a zebra.
• Leghorn: pure white, the classic cartoon hen.

Whatever the breed, the comb and wattles are bright red, the beak and legs are usually yellow, and most chicks are pale fluffy yellow. Roosters often shine with green and bronze in their tail feathers, which is a good place for a metallic pen.

Easy chicks and busy barns

The simplest pages keep one bird large with little around it. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Chick and dog
• Wings in the rain
• Grumpy hen

The detailed ones fill the page with feathers, straw, planks and flowers. Lots of detail begins with:

• Basket of eggs
• Patterned hen
• Hanging basket

From egg to chicken

The hatching page and the brooder page make a neat little life cycle lesson for the classroom, especially in spring when many schools hatch eggs in an incubator. Line up the pages in order (the basket of eggs, the chick hatching, the chicks under the heat lamp, a hen leading her chicks) and have children number and color them. The Easter basket page and the round chick hugging an egg also work on an Easter table.

Printing the farmyard

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so every comb and tail feather stays on the paper. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack puts the whole flock into one file. More farm friends are in the farm coloring pages, the cow coloring pages and the duck coloring pages, and more chicks and eggs in the Easter coloring pages.