I just love pictures of baby chicks. They just have such a charm and whimsey to them, all fluffy, yellow and new. These little chicks are drawing in simple lines in black and white but I don’t think that diminishes the charm of this vintage chicken image in any way.
We have three chicks hatching from their eggs and two unhatched eggs in this sweet little drawing by the illustrator Frank T. Merrill (1848-1936). Merrill was on of the illustrators that worked with Mark Twain on The Prince and the Pauper in 1881. This illustration is from The Myths and Fables of To-Day by Samuel Adams Drake from 1900.
I’ve never had chickens but I did spend some time on a friends farm. It was the youngest child’s job to collect the eggs each morning. Had they let the eggs mature, it would have taken about 21 days until the chicks hatched. The hen will gently cluck to encourage her chicks to break through their eggs. (I didn’t know that until I looked it up to write this post. Sounds cool.)
This hatching chicks drawing doesn’t include hen. (You might find a nice one amongst our other chicken images.) The simple lines on this drawing would allow you to easily color in the birds and eggs to match your project.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
