Do chickens fear certain colours?

[Brebis]

I had an interesting experience with my chickens today.

Being nice out I donned one of my T shirts to do some work and it just happens to be red. I went out to the shed coop to get a small shovel to clean out the brooder pen in the basement. The chickens were all in there at the time and as soon as I went in they went crazy! I have never seen them so terrified-the younger cockerels were trying to escape out the glass windows.
I talked to them in my normal voice but to no avail and I had to quickly grab the shovel an leave. After finishing the cleaning I had to go back into the shed coop again to get a tarp. By then they're all getting settled for the night so I thought things would be fine but NO they go crazy again, so I again beat a hasty retreat.

After a bit of work I don my usual grey jacket as an experiment and head to the shed coop again to settle them in for the nigh. Sure enough they couldn't care less and were happily getting ready for bed.

So, obviously they didn't like my red shirt! But was it the colour or did they recently have a bad experience with someone in a a red shirt?

[Jaye]

yeah, I've noticed that too - a large amount of red gets extreme reactions from my chickens. I've learned my lesson and don't wear my red rain jacket around them any more.

[Killerbunny]

No reaction here to red,

[Robbie]

Interesting........ and here we are using red brooder lamps!

[Jaye]

QR_BBPOST No reaction here to red,

Huh. Well, maybe mine are just taking exception to a butt ugly coat, rather than its colour.

[Ontario Chick]

I have noticed them reacting to a different hat, regardless of color, and different containers, especially empty feed bags, probably looks like a giant bird.
It wasn't the shovel they were reacting to, was it?
If you always wear a jacket, they probably thought you were a stranger.
It always surprises me they can tell the difference between visitor and "their" person

[Brebis]

They weren't reacting to the shovel OC as it's always stored there and I take it out quite often. Funnily enough though it's a bright red child's plastic shovel!

The young cockerels reacted the most, the older birds only seemed to get upset because they were. I've worn this shirt in previous years and wondering if it was just the younger ones who may not have seem me in it before.

I know there have been studies with other livestock I.e dairy cattle who are very sensitive to different people depending on how they are treated and will react to different colours of coveralls depending on whether it is a "nice" person or not.

I'm usually tripping over these chickens they're so used to me so it was quite shocking to see them react that way when the only thing different was a Red shirt!

[kenya]

When I wear a difference coat mostly in the winter I find the roosters react badly, don't seem to realise it's just me.

[WLLady]

hats here.....my roosters go crazy if i wear a baseball cap, they don't know who i am. I think the red might have made them thought you were competition-very BIG RED competition. boys will recognize another boy by the increased red on the face and throat area...maybe they interpreted your red shirt as "wow, that's a huge amount of red, that boy is probably really dominant and there's no hope that we could challenge than, in fact i have no desire to challenge that and since it's coming this way i'm going to run". we see it hunting wild turkeys....a moderately sized jake decoy can pull in big birds, but if you put out too "macho" a decoy, with larger amounts of red, or a full big tail fan, you can actually scare them all away...the other boys won't contest a bigger bird they have no hope of beating. just a thought....

[Killerbunny]

The day I got new boots that were green instead of my black ones Lucky went nuts when I opened up that day. Came straight at the boots then looked up and backed off with a sheepish "oops it's her" look.