Farm Trivia
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164 free Farm trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
57 free Farm trivia questions with answers. Farm trivia is a favourite for classrooms, county fairs and family quiz nights, and this set is built for all three. Fifty questions cover the animals (why cows chew the cud, what a mule's parents are, which bird has a snood), the crops (where corn and potatoes were first grown, which grain feeds half the world), and the machines and inventors that changed farming, from Eli Whitney's cotton gin to Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat. Around a third of the questions are easy enough for an eight-year-old: what a baby goat is called, what a scarecrow is for, what animal gives us wool. The rest climb through farm history, dairy science, honeybees, Charlotte's Web and Animal Farm to a few genuinely tough ones for people who grew up on one. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the animals, crops, inventions and books involved, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 164 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A baby goat is called what?
A kid
A baby goat is a kid; the word comes from Old Norse kið. Adult females are does or nanny goats and males are bucks or billy goats.
Q 02Which farm animal is the main source of wool?
Sheep
Wool is the most widely used animal fibre in the world and is usually harvested by shearing once a year.
Q 03A cow's stomach has how many compartments?
Four
A cow's stomach has four compartments: rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum. The rumen hosts the microbes that break down grass, and cattle re-chew regurgitated cud.
Q 04An adult female sheep is called what?
A ewe
An adult female sheep is a ewe; a male is a ram and a castrated male a wether. Meat from young sheep is lamb, from older animals mutton.
Q 05Pigs roll in mud mainly to do what?
Cool down
Pigs cool down by wallowing because their sweat glands are limited to the snout, so evaporation from a mud coat does what sweat cannot; it also protects against sunburn.
Q 06The domestic chicken descends from which wild bird of Southeast Asia?
Red junglefowl
The domestic chicken descends from the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) of Southeast Asia; the grey junglefowl later contributed the yellow-skin gene seen in some breeds.
Q 07A hen bred for egg laying can produce roughly how many eggs a year?
Over 300
Modern laying hens produce over 300 eggs a year; wild junglefowl lay only about a dozen a season, and millennia of selective breeding did the rest.
Q 08Chickens with red earlobes generally lay eggs of what colour?
Brown
Red-earlobed breeds generally lay brown eggs and white-earlobed breeds lay white ones, though there is no nutritional difference between the two.
Q 09A young horse that is still nursing from its mother is sometimes called what?
A suckling
A suckling becomes a weanling once it is weaned; foals can stand and run within hours of birth.
Q 10Horses are able to sleep in what unusual way?
Standing up
Horses can sleep standing up: a 'stay apparatus' of tendons and ligaments locks their legs so they can flee predators quickly; they lie down only for short spells of deep sleep.
Q 11A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and what?
A female horse
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey (jack) and a female horse (mare); mules are almost always sterile because horse and donkey chromosome counts differ, 64 against 62.
Q 12Most domestic ducks descend from which wild species?
Mallard
Most domestic ducks, from the Pekin to the Indian Runner, descend from the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos); the Muscovy duck of the Americas is the only other domesticated duck species.
Q 13On a turkey, what is the fleshy growth on top of the beak called?
The snood
The snood is the fleshy flap above a turkey's beak that lengthens and reddens when a male displays; the wattle is the growth hanging beneath the beak.
Q 21Cattle were domesticated roughly 10,500 years ago from which wild ox?
The aurochs
Domestic cattle descend from the aurochs, a huge wild ox whose last animal died in Poland in 1627; the taming happened in central Anatolia, the Levant and western Iran.
Q 22Maize (corn) was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in which modern country?
Mexico
Maize was domesticated in the Balsas River valley of southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte, whose tiny hard kernels look nothing like a modern cob.
Q 23Rice is the staple food of roughly what share of the world's population?
Over half
Rice is the staple food for over half of the world's people, mostly in Asia; China and India alone grow around half of the roughly 800 million tonnes harvested each year.
Q 14Baby turkeys are called what?
Poults
Baby turkeys are poults; turkeys were domesticated in central Mexico and reached Europe with the Spanish in the 16th century.
Q 15Alpacas were traditionally herded in the mountains of which continent?
South America
Alpacas were herded in the Andes of South America, mainly in Peru and Bolivia; the two breeds, Suri and Huacaya, are told apart by straight locks versus crimped fleece.
Q 16The Holstein Friesian is the dominant breed in which kind of farming?
Dairy
The Holstein Friesian is the world's dominant dairy breed; the black-and-white cattle give the highest milk yields of any breed and are farmed in more than 160 countries.
Q 17The shaggy, long-horned Highland breed of cattle comes from which country?
Scotland
Its Gaelic name is Bò Ghàidhealach and it originated in the Highlands and Western Isles.
Q 18The Border Collie was bred mainly to do what job?
Herd sheep
The Border Collie was bred to herd sheep; it comes from the Anglo-Scottish border country and descends from Britain's old working sheepdogs.
Q 19Merino sheep, prized for fine wool, were for centuries a strict monopoly of which country?
Spain
Smuggling the breed out was punishable by death; it later became the backbone of Australia's wool trade.
Q 20Which animal was the first to be domesticated by humans?
The dog
Dogs were established across Eurasia before any crop was cultivated or any other animal tamed.
Q 24The potato was first domesticated in which region?
The Andes
The potato was domesticated in the Andes: its single origin lies in southern Peru and north-west Bolivia, some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Q 25Wheat was first cultivated around 9600 BC in which region?
The Fertile Crescent
Wheat was first cultivated in the Fertile Crescent, where einkorn and emmer were domesticated around 9600 BC in what is now south-east Turkey and the Levant.
Q 26The soybean is the world's most widely grown example of what kind of plant?
Legume
The soybean is a legume, the most widely grown in the world; Brazil and the United States lead production, and tofu, soy milk and edamame are traditional East Asian uses.
Q 27Cotton fibre grows inside a protective case around the seeds called what?
A boll
In nature the boll helps disperse the seeds; on the farm it is what the picker or the gin has to open.
Q 28Who invented the modern cotton gin in 1793?
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney built his cotton gin in 1793 and patented it in 1794; it made short-staple cotton profitable, with grim consequences for the expansion of slavery.
Q 29John Deere made his name in 1837 by inventing the first commercially successful what?
Steel plough
John Deere, a Vermont blacksmith who moved to Illinois, made a polished steel plough in 1837 that shed the sticky prairie soil which clogged cast-iron ploughs.
Q 30Cyrus McCormick is credited as the inventor of which farm machine?
The mechanical reaper
His company merged into International Harvester in 1902.