170 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 170 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A baby goat is called what?
A kid
The word comes from the Latin haedus; 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
The rumen is the biggest of them and hosts the microbes that let cattle digest grass; the animals regurgitate and re-chew their food as cud.
Q 04An adult female sheep is called what?
A ewe
A male is a ram, a castrated male a wether, and the meat of a young animal is lamb while older animals give mutton.
Q 05Pigs roll in mud mainly to do what?
Cool down
Their eccrine sweat glands are limited to the snout, so evaporative cooling from a wallow does what sweat cannot; it also protects against sunburn.
Q 06The domestic chicken descends from which wild bird of Southeast Asia?
Red junglefowl
There are now more than 26 billion chickens on Earth, more than any other bird.
Q 07A hen bred for egg laying can produce roughly how many eggs a year?
Over 300
Wild junglefowl lay only about a dozen eggs a season; millennia of selective breeding did the rest.
Q 08Chickens with red earlobes generally lay eggs of what colour?
Brown
White-earlobed breeds tend to lay white eggs; there is no nutritional difference between the two.
Q 09Goats are unusual among farm animals for having what shape of pupil?
Horizontal slit
The wide horizontal pupil gives them a broad field of view to spot predators while grazing without being dazzled from above.
Q 10A young horse that is still nursing is sometimes called what?
A suckling
Once weaned it becomes a weanling; foals can stand and run within hours of birth.
Q 11Horses are able to sleep in what unusual way?
Standing up
The trait relates to their need to flee predators quickly; younger horses sleep much more than adults.
Q 12A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and what?
A female horse
The reverse cross, a stallion with a jenny, produces the rarer hinny.
Q 13Most domestic ducks descend from which wild species?
Mallard
The mallard was domesticated in China around 2000 BC, with the Muscovy duck the only other contributor.
Q 14On a turkey, what is the fleshy growth on top of the beak called?
Q 21Which 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 22Cattle were domesticated roughly 10,500 years ago from which extinct wild ox?
The aurochs
The taming happened in central Anatolia, the Levant and western Iran.
Q 23Maize (corn) was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in which modern country?
Mexico
Its wild ancestor is a grass called teosinte, whose tiny hard kernels look nothing like a modern cob.
Q 24Rice is the staple food of roughly what share of the world's population?
The snood
The one under the beak is the wattle; most farm turkeys are bred white so their pin feathers do not show on the dressed bird.
Q 15Baby turkeys are called what?
Poults
Turkeys were domesticated in central Mexico and reached Europe with the Spanish in the 16th century.
Q 16Alpacas were traditionally herded in the mountains of which continent?
South America
The two breeds, Suri and Huacaya, are told apart by their fibre: straight locks versus crimped bundles.
Q 17The Holstein Friesian is the dominant breed in which kind of farming?
Dairy
The black-and-white cattle are found in more than 160 countries.
Q 18The 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 19The Border Collie was bred mainly to do what job?
Herd sheep
It comes from the Anglo-Scottish border country and descends from the sheepdogs once found all over Britain.
Q 20Merino 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.
Over half
China and India together grow about 52 percent of the world's 800 million tonnes a year.
Q 25The potato was first domesticated in which region?
The Andes
Its single origin lies in southern Peru and north-west Bolivia, some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Q 26Wheat was first cultivated around 9600 BC in which region?
The Fertile Crescent
Gluten, which makes up most of wheat's protein, is why the grain is so useful to bakers.
Q 27The soybean is the world's most widely grown example of what kind of plant?
Legume
Brazil and the United States lead production; tofu, soy milk and edamame are all traditional East Asian uses.
Q 28Cotton 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 29Who invented the modern cotton gin in 1793?
Eli Whitney
It was patented the next year and made short-staple cotton profitable, with grim consequences for the expansion of slavery.
Q 30John Deere made his name in 1837 by inventing the first commercially successful what?
Steel plough
He was a Vermont blacksmith who moved to Illinois, where the sticky prairie soil clogged cast-iron ploughs.