Farm Coloring Pages

A farm is a good place for a coloring page because everything on it is busy. These free printable farm coloring pages are full of animals getting on with their day: a cow, a pig, a sheep and the hens crowd around the water trough, a rooster crows from the barn roof while the others wait at the door, a goose chases a startled cat across the farmyard, and a mother duck leads her ducklings up from the pond. Some of them have the day off, like the cow, pig, duck and sheep having a picnic under the apple trees, or the farm band in the barn with a fiddle, a drum kit and a banjo.

The people who run the farm are here too. A farmer milks a cow on a little stool with the cat waiting beside the pail, another shears a sheep, and a third checks the beehives in the orchard. A girl in overalls carries a basket of eggs with a puppy behind her, a boy scatters grain for the hens and ducks, and a family fills crates in the vegetable garden. Out in the fields, tractors pull a trailer of pumpkins, plow straight furrows and bale hay, and an old one parked by the barn has a puppy asleep on its seat. The farmhouse itself, behind its five-bar gate with a kennel and a water butt, is drawn in the house coloring pages.

Which farm pages for which age?

Quick to color, above the grid, narrows the set to the open shapes and leads with the simplest.

• A woolly sheep on a hill
• A boy scattering grain for the birds
• A rooster crowing on a fence post

Most of this collection is busier than that, so check before printing a pile for a toddler group. The next step up has one or two animals and a simple background, which suits children from about four or five: the goat standing on a crate, the goose chasing the cat, the duck family by the pond, the pig and her piglets asleep in the straw, and the smiling tractor baling hay. The busy farmyards, with fences, crops and animals in every corner, are for children around seven and up.

Farm coloring pages for adults

Lots of detail keeps the other end, where barn boards, hay, crates and rows of crops fill the page with small areas. The densest open the band.

• Inside the barn with a hayloft
• Farm animals picnicking in the orchard
• Barnyard animals at the water trough

The farmyard seen from above, with its henhouse, well and vegetable beds, and the whole farm with its silos and windmill take an evening, and so does the barn interior with its hayloft ladder and hanging tools. They reward sharp colored pencils in the tight corners (the colored pencil guide compares sets).

What colors are real farm animals?

Farm animals are less colorful than picture books suggest, and that helps. Black and white patches are the classic dairy cow, but cows can also be solid brown, red or cream. Pigs are pink, but plenty of breeds are black or spotted. Sheep are cream rather than pure white, so leave the wool as bare paper and add a little gray or beige where the fleece curls. A donkey is usually gray or brown with a pale muzzle and belly. A rooster has a red comb and wattles and a tail of dark feathers that shine green in the sun, while hens can be brown, white, black or speckled.

Barns are traditionally red, and a red barn with white trim makes the animals in front of it stand out. Tractors come in red, green, blue or orange, so let the child choose. For the sky, a pale blue with the barn roof in gray looks calmer than a bright blue that competes with the animals.

Telling the animals apart, properly

Farm pages are the ones small children ask most questions about, and the answers are easy once you know where to look.

Sheep and goats: a sheep's tail hangs down, a goat's points up. Goats have beards and sheep do not. Goats browse upwards at hedges and bushes; sheep graze down at grass.

Cows and bulls: both can have horns, so horns are not the difference. Cattle bred for milk are angular and bony with a large udder; cattle bred for beef are square and heavy through the shoulders.

Pigs: the curly tail is real, and the ears are a breed marker, some upright and some flopping forward over the eyes.

Chickens: the cockerel has a large upright comb, long arched tail feathers and spurs on his legs. The hen is smaller and plainer, which is the point of the difference.

Horse and donkey: donkeys have long ears, an upright mane with no forelock, and a dark cross over the shoulders and down the spine.

For coloring: farm animals are mostly browns, creams and blacks, and the way to stop a page looking muddy is to keep one strong color in the scene that is not an animal: a red barn door, a blue gate, a green tractor, and let the animals stay quiet against it.

Where does our food come from?

The farm pages make a simple lesson for a class or the kitchen table. Hand out the farmer milking the cow for milk, the farmer shearing the sheep for wool, the hen on her nest and the girl with the basket for eggs, the beekeeper in the orchard for honey, and the family harvesting vegetables for the rest of dinner. Each child colors one and explains what it gives. For a younger group, sing Old MacDonald and hold up each finished animal when its sound comes around.

The farm changes with the seasons too. In the snow, a sheep in a scarf, a cow and a pig build a snowman, and in the fall a tractor hauls pumpkins. For spring on the farm, with piglets in the mud and a calf drinking from a bucket, see the spring coloring pages, and for barns, hay bales and farm stands in autumn colors, the fall coloring pages.

Press Add to pack under any drawing to set it aside, then print everything you picked as one PDF. The pack keeps your picks as you move between collections, so the horse coloring pages, a corgi herding sheep from the dog coloring pages and more animal coloring pages can go in the same print.

Every sheet is A4. Print at 100 % scale on A4, or pick "fit to page" for US Letter, and leave draft mode switched off so the line stays solid black. The printing guide has the rest. Every sheet is a free printable PDF at 300 dpi.