Early concept art, with two characters that merged into Babs, and an early design of Bunty where she was a pigeon disguised as a chicken.
- Will Smith and John Travolta were considered to voice Rocky.
- In an early version of the film, Ginger was going to have a little brother named Nobby. He was removed in an attempt to make the film "less cute."
- Bunty was originally a pigeon.
- Babs is a combination of two characters, one of which was named Edwina. The filmmakers later reused the name Edwina for the chicken whose head gets lopped off and is eaten by the Tweedys, as an inside joke.
- Fowler was originally a drunkard who believed himself to be useless until Ginger convinces him otherwise.
- Rocky had a wattle on his neck that was removed during production as it was accidentally left out during shooting, which also occurred around the time the animators decided the wattle didn't suit Rocky.
- Mr. Tweedy originally had a Mini (a British brand of car) which he adored very much. It would have been destroyed during the final escape attempt.
- The circus worker who drops by the farm in search of Rocky was intended to have more dialogue, which for whatever reason was cut down to a one word line: "Sure".
- During the montage of the chickens trying to fly, there were to be a group of pigeons watching them from a power line and mocking them at the same time. These characters were cut from the final film, but their lines were given to the rats Nick and Fetcher, who stick around and watch in the former's stead.
- There was to be a scene inside the pie machine where Rocky saw a skeleton of a dead chicken and quipped, "They bought a used machine! How cheap is that?"
- At one point, Rocky and Ginger were going to surf out of the pie machine on a giant tidal wave of gravy as a result of their sabotage instead of just running out. Although this idea was dropped, the idea of a giant gravy explosion was saved for the climax, when the pie machine was destroyed.
- Initially, when it was revealed that Rocky never could fly because he was fired out of a cannon, there was to be a flashback that showed Rocky being stuffed into a cannon at the circus. However, the producers decided to cut this out of the movie so that they could shorten it and came up with the idea of Rocky's poster being torn in half and then pieced back together later on.
- When Rocky appears to have a nightmare, he shouts about being stuffed into a dark place. Perhaps that was planned to foreshadow this deleted scene.
- For a while, the filmmakers considered the idea of having Mrs. Tweedy be the one attacked and tied up by the chickens in the climax.
- At one point, the movie had a Deus ex Machina ending in which the chickens suddenly gained the ability to fly after the crate breaks apart in mid-air. The filmmakers decided it was too far-fetched. A remnant of this appeared in a tie-in book where Fowler is giving a log of the flight in the crate where he notes that the crate is starting to break up and the only thing he and the others can do is flap their wings.
- There was animation done of The Big Damn Kiss of Ginger and Rocky where the beak contact was clearly visible. It looked, as the directors said in the commentary, "like two suction cups stuck together." Maybe Don Rosa should have given them some lessons.
◊ - Instead of the door falling on Mrs. Tweedy on its own, after Mr. Tweedy said "I told you they was organised", Mrs. Tweedy was originally going to go on a rant and insult him, causing Mr. Tweedy to finally snap and push the door on her. They cut this because it made Mr. Tweedy look too mean. However in the final cut, if you look closely, you can still see that he pushed the door onto an enraged Mrs. Tweedy.
- Originally, after Mr. Tweedy says to Mrs. Tweedy he was right about chickens being organized, before Mrs. Tweedy could shout at him, a rock would hit her on the head, leaving her unconscious. The scene was fully animated, and it was changed to Mr. Tweedy dropping the doors on Mrs. Tweedy.
- Another idea for the ending involved a Sequel Hook in which the audience was shown that a second chicken farm is being constructed near the island. It was dropped because Aardman wasn't sure if a sequel would ever be made. A sequel would eventually be announced years later in the form of Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, with the planned Sequel Hook forming its premise.
