150 Fun Facts About Farm Animal

How many compartments does a cow's stomach have?

Four: a cow has one stomach divided into four compartments, not four stomachs, and only the last of them is a true stomach that digests with acid and enzymes.

What is the name of the first and largest compartment of a cow's stomach?

The rumen is the first and largest compartment; its microbes ferment grass the cow cannot digest alone, and ruminants take their name from it.

What is a cow doing when it chews the cud?

Re-chewing regurgitated food: grass is swallowed barely chewed, softened in the stomach, then brought back up and ground fine so that microbes can break down its tough fibre.

Cattle are colour-blind to red, so what makes a fighting bull charge the matador's cape?

The way it moves: a bull goes for the swirling cloth whatever its colour. The cape's red is a matter of tradition, and it helps to hide the bloodstains.

What is a young female pig that has not yet had piglets called?

A gilt becomes a sow once she has had her first piglets. The word comes from Old Norse gyltr, 'young sow', and has nothing to do with the gilt that means a coat of gold.

Which of these mammals carries its young for about as long as a cow does?

A human: a cow is pregnant for about nine months, much as a woman is, but her calf is usually on its feet and suckling within an hour or two.

From which wild animal were cattle domesticated?

The last known aurochs died in a Polish forest in 1627. In the 1920s two German zoo directors, the Heck brothers, tried to breed it back from domestic cattle.

What name is given to the two-toed hoof of cattle, goats and pigs?

A cloven hoof is split into two toes, the third and fourth. Jewish dietary law allows animals that have one and also chew the cud, which rules out the pig: it has the hoof but does not chew the cud.

In a 2007 study, protein fragments from which dinosaur's fossil bone most closely matched a chicken's?

Tyrannosaurus rex: collagen fragments reported from a 68-million-year-old bone matched chicken more closely than any other living animal tested, in line with the view that birds are living dinosaurs.

Which wild bird are chickens mainly descended from?

The red junglefowl lives wild in the forests of South and Southeast Asia and can still fly up into the trees to roost; a domestic chicken is too heavy to fly more than a short distance.

What is a young female chicken under a year old called?

A pullet: the name is an old French diminutive meaning 'little hen', from the Latin pullus, 'young animal', the same root that gives English the word poultry.

What is a castrated male chicken called?

A capon is castrated young to improve its meat: without male hormones the bird is less active and lays down more fat, so the flesh is moister and more tender than a rooster's.

How long does a fertile chicken egg take to hatch?

About 21 days, or three weeks: a hen lays an egg at a time over many days but only starts sitting once the clutch is complete, so all the chicks develop and hatch together.

What are the fleshy flaps hanging under a chicken's beak called?

Wattles are the fleshy flaps under the beak. Hens have them too, but a rooster's are larger, so their size is one of the signs that tell a rooster from a hen.

Chickens have no teeth, so which muscular organ grinds up their food?

The gizzard: its thick muscular walls crush grain against grit and small stones that the bird swallows for the purpose, doing the work of teeth.

A male pig's tusks are overgrown versions of which teeth?

The canines: a male pig's upper and lower canines never stop growing and sharpen themselves by grinding against each other. An elephant's tusks, by contrast, are incisors.

What is the term for a sow giving birth to piglets?

Farrowing comes from fearh, the Old English word for a pig. Before she farrows, a sow builds a nest of twigs and leaves to give birth in.

What is the main reason pigs wallow in mud?

To cool themselves down: pigs barely sweat, so a coat of wet mud cools the skin as it dries and may also guard against sunburn and parasites, which is why 'sweating like a pig' gets it backwards.

What is 'rooting' in pigs?

Nudging the snout into something: piglets do it from birth to find milk and adults keep it up to dig for food, which is why some owners fit nose rings to stop them ploughing up the ground.

What is a castrated male sheep called?

A wether: the word survives in 'bellwether', originally the castrated male that wore a bell and led the other sheep, so the shepherd could hear where they had gone.

Which dog breed is famed for herding sheep with a fixed, intense stare known as 'the eye'?

The Border Collie, bred along the border of England and Scotland, gets in front of the sheep and stares them down, where a cattle dog would drive from behind by nipping at heels.

What shape are a sheep's pupils?

Horizontal slits: the wide, letterbox pupils give a sheep such broad peripheral vision that it can watch for danger behind itself without turning its head.

Which wild animal are sheep most likely descended from?

The mouflon, a wild sheep of western Asia, wears a short coat of brown hair: the first tame sheep were kept for meat, milk and skins, and woolly fleeces were bred in thousands of years later.

Which sheep, born in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell?

Dolly had three mothers: one sheep gave the udder cell whose DNA was copied, a second the emptied egg it went into, and a third carried her to term at the Roslin Institute in Scotland.

What is the usual word for a group of sheep?

A flock: the urge to bunch together is so strong that a sheep cut off from the others becomes stressed, and shepherds and their dogs rely on it to move the animals as one.

Which wild animal is the likely ancestor of domestic goats?

The bezoar ibex shares its name with the bezoar, a stony lump from the stomachs of goats and other cud-chewers that was once prized as an antidote to poison; it still lives wild in the Zagros Mountains.

Why will a goat chew on cardboard, paper or clothing?

It tastes to test for food: goats are curious browsers that investigate new things by nibbling them, yet quickly refuse anything dirty or distasteful, so they are far choosier than their eat-anything reputation suggests.

What makes 'fainting goats' topple over when they are startled?

Their muscles lock stiff: an inherited condition called myotonia congenita makes the muscles seize up when the goat is startled or excited, so it is stiffness, not a faint, that tips it over.

What is a castrated male horse called?

A gelding is a castrated male horse: the operation makes him calmer and easier to handle than a stallion, which is why most male riding and working horses are gelded.

What is a person who trims and shoes horses' hooves called?

A farrier takes the name from ferrum, Latin for iron. The nails go through the insensitive outer wall of the hoof, much like a toenail, so a well-fitted shoe causes the horse no pain.

What is the V-shaped, rubbery pad on the underside of a horse's hoof called?

The frog is the V-shaped pad on the underside of the hoof; it cushions impact and pumps blood back up the leg each time the horse steps.

Which of these is one of the four natural gaits of a horse?

The canter is named after Canterbury, from the easy speed at which pilgrims were said to ride there.

Can a horse sleep standing up?

Yes, and lying down too: a locking mechanism in the legs makes standing sleep possible, but horses still need to lie down for deep sleep.

The saying 'never look a gift horse in the mouth' refers to judging what about a horse from its teeth?

Its age: a horse's teeth erupt and wear in a known pattern, so buyers checked the mouth before paying. Doing the same to a present was rude, and the saying goes back at least to St Jerome.

What is the fleshy protuberance on top of a turkey's beak called?

The snood hangs limp over the beak, but when a male struts it fills with blood, reddens and lengthens, and hens have been shown to prefer males with longer ones.

What is a baby turkey called?

A poult is a young turkey, from the French poulet, 'young chicken'. Wild poults are up and out of the nest within a day of hatching, feeding themselves on insects and seeds.

Why are commercial turkey breeds bred by artificial insemination?

Males are too large to mate: broad-breasted commercial toms have been bred so heavy in the chest that natural mating is impractical, so hens are inseminated artificially.

What does 'polled' mean when describing cattle?

Polled cattle are naturally hornless, a dominant inherited trait; breeds such as the Aberdeen Angus are polled, which spares farmers from dehorning calves.

'Cattle' once meant movable wealth of any kind: which money word shares its Latin root?

Capital: both words go back to the Latin caput, 'head', by way of capitale, 'holdings'. 'Chattel', the lawyers' word for movable property, is the same word a third time.

Which cattle breed is known for its long horns and long, shaggy coat?

The Highland wears a double coat, long oily outer hair over a downy underlayer, that lets it winter outdoors in Scotland. Island cattle were once swum across the narrow straits to the mainland.

What is usually true of a freemartin, a female calf born twin to a male?

She is infertile: the twins share a blood supply in the womb, and hormones from the male stop her reproductive organs developing properly, so she looks female but cannot breed.

Which chicken breed is the world's leading layer of white eggs?

The Leghorn takes its name from Livorno, the Tuscan port known in English as Leghorn, from which the first birds were shipped across the Atlantic; at first Americans simply called them Italians.

What is a hen called when sitting on eggs to hatch them?

Broody: a broody hen stops laying and sits tight on her eggs, which is why commercial laying breeds have been selected for generations to almost never go broody.

Why did 'rooster' probably catch on in 18th-century America?

To avoid the crude sense of an older name: 'rooster' is thought to have spread as a polite stand-in for 'cock' once that word had picked up a vulgar meaning, much as 'donkey' edged out 'ass'.

What kind of eater is a pig?

An omnivore: pigs eat roots, leaves and fruit as readily as scraps of meat, which is why kitchen waste, or swill, was fed to them for centuries, until Britain banned it after the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak.

Which country is the world's largest pork producer?

China: as of 2021 it ate about half of the world's pork, so although it raises more pigs than any other country it still has to import more.

What special feature strengthens a pig's snout?

A prenasal bone, an extra bone at the tip of the snout, stiffens the disc of cartilage there, so a pig can use its nose as a shovel in hard soil.

In which two Neolithic regions were pigs independently domesticated?

The Near East and China: pigs were tamed separately in the two regions, and in the 18th and early 19th centuries Asian breeds were shipped to Europe, bringing the two lines together.

What is an intact male sheep called?

A ram: at mating time farmers strap a block of coloured crayon, a raddle, to his chest, so that a smudge of colour on a female's rump shows she has been mated.

How do lamb and mutton differ?

One is from younger sheep, the other from older: lamb comes from an animal in its first year, and mutton, from a fully grown one, is tougher and stronger-tasting, so most shops now sell only lamb.

What is the most widely used animal fibre?

Sheep's wool: about two million tonnes are shorn each year, and because the fibre chars instead of melting or dripping, it is chosen for firefighters' clothing and for carpets in trains and aircraft.

What is a young llama or alpaca called?

A cria, from the Spanish for a young animal, is nearly always born in the morning, which is thought to give it the day to dry off and find its feet before the cold mountain night.

Which everyday expression comes from the animal that Leviticus sends into the wilderness carrying the people's sins?

Scapegoat: William Tyndale coined the word, from 'escape' and 'goat', for his 1530 English Bible; in the same ritual a second goat was sacrificed.

Which goat breed produces the lustrous fibre called mohair?

The Angora goat, named after Ankara in Turkey, gives mohair; confusingly, the fibre sold as angora comes from the Angora rabbit instead.

What is a male duck called?

A drake is a male duck, and he is the quiet one: in most farm breeds the loud, classic quack belongs to the female, while he manages only a softer, raspier call.

What term describes the distinctive smell of a male goat?

Hircine comes from hircus, Latin for a he-goat, and it sticks to the smell for good reason: billies take on a powerful odour in the breeding season, which male sheep do not.

From which small, many-toed ancestor did the horse evolve over some 50 million years?

Eohippus, the 'dawn horse', was about the size of a small dog, with four toes on each front foot; as forests gave way to grassland its descendants grew taller and came to run on a single toe.

Which everyday bodily reflex is a horse almost entirely unable to perform?

Vomiting: a tight ring of muscle where the gullet joins the stomach works as a one-way valve, so a horse cannot bring bad feed back up, which is one reason colic can turn deadly so fast.

What is the joint just above a horse's hoof, marked by a tuft of hair, called?

The fetlock looks like an ankle but matches the ball of your foot, because a horse stands on the tip of a single toe.

From which wild bird is the domestic duck mainly descended?

The mallard: it was probably first tamed by rice farmers in southern China about 4,000 years ago, and ducks are still turned loose in paddies there to eat pests and manure the crop.

Which duck breed stands erect like a penguin and is kept mainly for its eggs?

The Indian Runner stands erect like a penguin because its legs sit far back on its body, so it runs where other ducks waddle.

Where was the domestic turkey first domesticated over 2,000 years ago?

Central Mesoamerica: turkeys were domesticated there at least 2,000 years ago, and Spanish ships carried them to Europe in the 16th century.

Why were most farmed turkeys bred to have white plumage?

Pale pin feathers don't show on the carcass: white plumage leaves no dark stubs in the skin of a plucked bird, so the Broad Breasted White has been the standard commercial turkey since the 1960s.

What is the male turkey's loud, rolling call known as?

Gobbling: it is the males that gobble, calling in spring to announce themselves to hens and to rival males, which is why a tom is also known as a gobbler.

Which wild goose is the ancestor of Europe's farmyard geese?

The greylag goose: European breeds descend from it, while Chinese geese come from the Asian swan goose and can be told apart by the knob at the base of the bill.

What is a male goose called?

A gander is a male goose, and 'take a gander', slang for having a look, comes from craning the neck the way a goose does.

Which untamed equine gave rise to the donkey?

The African wild ass: its descendants number more than 40 million, yet the wild ancestor is critically endangered, with only a few hundred left in the Horn of Africa.

What is an adult female donkey called?

A jenny is an adult female donkey: the pet form of a woman's name replaced the blunter 'she-ass' during the 18th century, around the time 'donkey' itself took over from 'ass'.

What is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse?

A mule has a donkey father and a horse mother. Swap the parents and the foal is a hinny, which is rarer and generally smaller.

What is a female horse under four years old called?

A filly is a female horse under four: by then she has usually stopped growing and counts as a mare, though British and American racing draws the line at five.

What is the name for a donkey's loud 'hee-haw' call?

Braying: the call is so loud and long because wild donkeys live scattered across desert country, and a bray that carries for kilometres is thought to keep them in touch.

What is the loose fold of skin hanging beneath the neck of cattle called?

The dewlap is largest on heat-hardy tropical breeds, and the extra skin is thought to work as a radiator, giving a big animal more surface from which to lose heat.

Which feature marks out Brahman cattle from European breeds?

A shoulder hump: Brahmans were bred in the United States from humped cattle shipped from South Asia, and the hump comes with a tolerance of heat and humidity that European breeds lack.

Which two chambers of a cow's stomach are so closely joined that they are treated as one unit?

The rumen and reticulum work as one fermentation vat. Swallowed nails and wire settle there too, so farmers feed a cow a magnet to hold the metal safely in place.

Which greenhouse gas do cattle and sheep release, mostly by belching, while digesting grass?

Methane: microbes in the stomach give it off as they ferment grass, and nearly all of it leaves the animal as burps, not from the other end as the jokes have it.

What is the first milk a cow gives after calving, rich in antibodies, called?

Colostrum matters far more to a calf than to a human baby: no antibodies pass through a cow's placenta, so a newborn calf has no immune protection until it drinks this first milk, ideally within hours.

Which enzyme is needed to digest the main sugar in milk?

Lactase, made in the small intestine, splits lactose into glucose and galactose; people who stop producing it after childhood become lactose intolerant.

Which breed is the most common dairy cow in the UK, Europe and US?

The Holstein-Friesian, the black-and-white cow bred in the Netherlands, gives more milk than other breeds, which is why it has become the first choice of dairy farmers from Canada to Australia.

Cotton is cellulose, but what is wool made of?

Protein: wool is keratin, the same tough protein as hair, horn and hooves, which is why chemically it has more in common with silk, another animal fibre, than with cotton.

Which goat produces the fine, costly fibre used in pashmina shawls?

The Cashmere goat grows a soft winter undercoat that Himalayan herders comb out, rather than shear, each spring; pashmina is the finest grade, from goats kept high in Ladakh.

Which sheep breed grows the fine, soft wool most prized for clothing?

Merino: for centuries Spain guarded the breed as a royal monopoly and barred its export; lambs could leave the country only with the crown's permission.

What do male honey bees, the drones, develop from?

Unfertilised eggs: a drone develops from an unfertilised egg and is haploid, carrying only the queen's genes, while queens and workers come from fertilised, diploid eggs.

What are honey bee larvae first fed?

Rich royal jelly: every larva is fed the glandular secretion for its first three days; workers and drones then switch to honey and pollen, while future queens get royal jelly throughout.

Besides honey, which of these is a hive product beekeepers collect?

Propolis, or 'bee glue', is resin that bees collect from tree buds, work together with wax and saliva, and use to stop up cracks and strengthen the cells of the hive.

Where is a group of beehives kept?

An apiary, from the Latin apis, 'bee', is also called a bee yard; many are set beside orchards and farms, whose crops rely on the bees for pollination.

Which wild species is the ancestor of every breed of domestic rabbit?

The European rabbit, native to Spain, Portugal and southwestern France, is the only rabbit species ever domesticated, and people have since released it on every continent except Antarctica.

What are the blind, hairless young of a rabbit, born after a pregnancy of about a month, called?

Kits, short for kittens, are born helpless in a nest and nursed just once a day; a hare's leverets, by contrast, arrive fully furred with their eyes open.

What do rabbits eat a second time to get the full goodness out of their food?

Their own droppings: rabbits ferment tough plant fibre in a gut pouch, pass it as special soft pellets called cecotropes, and swallow those to absorb the nutrients on a second trip through.

The alpaca and llama are domesticated members of which animal family?

The camelids: llamas and alpacas are humpless South American cousins of the camels, known for spitting when annoyed, though mostly at each other rather than at people.

Which wild South American animal is the ancestor of the domestic llama?

The guanaco is the llama's wild ancestor; the alpaca was long classed beside it until DNA work in 2001 showed that it descends from the smaller vicuña instead.

Which empire relied on caravans of llamas to carry goods along steep mountain roads?

The Inca had no horses, draft animals or wheeled carts, so caravans of llamas moved goods from one end of the empire to the other.

Which country is home to most of the world's alpacas?

Peru: no wild alpacas exist, because mountain herders created the animal thousands of years ago by breeding wild stock for its fleece.

Which famous blue cheese is made from sheep's milk and ripened in limestone caves?

Roquefort: by law only cheese ripened in the natural Combalou caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon may carry the name; the mould that veins it, Penicillium roqueforti, thrives in their damp air.

In which religion are cattle considered sacred animals?

Hinduism: the cow is revered as a symbol of life and giving, and cow slaughter is banned in most Indian states.

Which cattle produce the intensely marbled beef sold as Kobe?

Wagyu means 'Japanese cattle', and genuine Kobe beef was not exported at all until 2012, so any 'Kobe' on a foreign menu before then was not the real thing.

What is the tuft of hair that falls between a horse's ears and down over its face called?

The forelock is the part of the mane that falls forward between the ears; the wild Przewalski's horse, whose short mane stands upright, has none.

Which two-beat horse gait moves the legs in diagonal pairs?

The trot: because each diagonal pair of hooves lands together, the rider is jolted twice a stride, which is why English-style riders 'post', rising from the saddle in time with the horse.

Where on a horse is its height measured?

At the withers, the ridge at the base of the neck: unlike the head, which a horse raises and lowers, it stays a fixed distance from the ground, so it gives the same reading every time.

What are calm, heavy draft horse breeds such as the Shire and Belgian collectively called?

Cold bloods are the heavy, even-tempered draft breeds; spirited Arabians and Thoroughbreds are hot bloods, and crossing the two types gave the warmbloods now seen in show jumping and dressage.

Which unit, equal to 4 inches, is used to measure a horse's height?

The hand was fixed at 4 inches by a statute of Henry VIII; a height written 15.2 means 15 hands and 2 inches, so there is no such thing as 15.4: that horse is simply 16 hands.

Pigs were traditionally used in France and Italy to sniff out which delicacy?

Truffles: a pig can scent the buried fungi up to a metre down, but it tends to eat its finds and tear up the soil, so Italy banned truffle pigs in 1985 and dogs now do most of the hunting.

What is a castrated male pig called?

A barrow is a male pig castrated before maturity, usually in its first weeks, which keeps the meat free of boar taint; an intact male is a boar.

Which everyday phrase comes from a Norwegian zoologist's study of how his hens ranked themselves?

Pecking order translates the German Hackordnung of Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, who watched hens from boyhood and found that each one knows which flockmates she may peck and which may peck her.

What are chickens farmed for meat called?

Broilers are bred to grow so fast that most reach slaughter weight in under six weeks, while slower-growing free-range birds need several weeks more.

What is the practice of shortening a lamb's tail called?

Docking: a lamb's tail is shortened, often with a tight rubber ring, to cut the risk of flystrike, a destructive infestation of fly maggots.

What is a young goat called?

A kid: a goat giving birth is said to be kidding, twins are the usual result, and calling a child a 'kid' began as slang borrowed from the goat in the 1590s.

In Norse myth, which god's chariot is pulled by two goats he can eat and then revive?

Thor can cook his goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr for supper and raise them whole next morning with his hammer; when a farm boy cracked a bone for the marrow, one goat came back lame.

In Greek myth, which god was nursed as an infant on goat's milk by Amalthea?

Zeus was hidden as a baby from his father Cronus, who devoured his children; in some tellings Amalthea is the goat herself, and the cornucopia, the horn of plenty, is her horn.

Which species is the domestic pig descended from?

The wild boar: the pig is often classed as Sus scrofa domesticus, and the two still interbreed, so escaped farm pigs and boar have merged into the feral hogs of the United States.

What soft sound do llamas make to their newborns and to one another?

Humming: a llama mother nuzzles and hums to her newborn rather than licking it, and adults hum to each other as everyday talk; their close cousin the alpaca hums in the same way.

Why do some sheep farmers put a llama out to graze with their animals?

To guard them from predators: a llama is naturally aggressive toward foxes, coyotes and stray dogs, and it will bond with the sheep and chase or kick at an intruder.

What is raw fleece straight off a sheep, before any washing, called?

Greasy wool: fleece as shorn, carrying its natural wax, sweat residue and vegetable matter; scouring removes them before carding and spinning.

What valuable waxy substance is found in unwashed raw fleece?

Lanolin, the wax secreted by the sheep's skin glands, is recovered when fleece is scoured and used in cosmetics, ointments and rust-proofing.

For racing, every Northern Hemisphere Thoroughbred officially turns a year older on which date?

1 January: whatever its real birthday, a Thoroughbred born north of the equator ages a year on New Year's Day, so a December foal is officially a yearling within weeks; in the south the date is 1 August.

On what basis is a pony distinguished from a horse for competition?

By how tall it stands: for most competitions a pony is a horse of up to about 147 cm (58 inches), whatever its breed, though pony-sized breeds such as the Icelandic are still called horses.

Which part of a goose's plumage is the usual filling for duvets and winter jackets?

Down feathers have almost no stiff shaft, so their loose, fluffy filaments trap air and hold in heat; most of the world's supply is a by-product of geese and ducks raised for meat.

An ox is typically which kind of cattle?

A castrated adult male: an ox is usually a male castrated and trained for draught work, mature from about four years old; castration makes it docile and safe to handle.

How are working oxen usually harnessed?

Yoked in pairs: oxen are usually worked two abreast under a wooden yoke, and heavy loads simply add more pairs, sometimes nine or ten.

Which unit of land began as the area a team of oxen could plough in one day?

The acre was reckoned as a day's ploughing for a team of oxen, laid out as a strip one furlong, or 'furrow long', in length, because turning the heavy plough and its team was so awkward.

What British and Indian English word also means a working ox?

Bullock: in British, Australian and Indian English a working ox is a bullock, and in colonial Australia drivers known as bullockies hauled wool to market behind long teams of them.

What is the proper name for the white of an egg?

Albumen, from the Latin albus, 'white', is about 90% water, yet heat alone is enough to set it: the clear liquid firms up and turns white as the egg cooks.

What are the twisted white strands attached to the yolk of a raw egg called?

Chalazae work like anchor ropes: they tie the yolk to the shell lining at either end, which is what keeps it hanging in the middle of the egg.

What is 'candling' an egg?

Shining a light through it shows whether an egg is fertile and how the embryo is growing, and packers candle eggs the same way to grade them by the size of the air cell.

Which of these outlawed conventional battery cages for laying hens from 2012?

The EU: a 1999 directive gave farmers twelve years to scrap bare battery cages, though roomier 'enriched' cages fitted with perches are still allowed.

What is the shell of a hen's egg mostly made of?

Calcium carbonate, the mineral of chalk and limestone, makes up nearly all of the shell, which is why an egg left in vinegar fizzes as the acid slowly dissolves its shell away.

Which red-bodied, white-faced breed is one of the classic British beef cattle?

The Hereford, from Herefordshire in England, passes its white face on to crossbred calves: put to black Angus cattle it gives the white-faced, black-bodied calves ranchers call black baldies.

Which hormone triggers milk let-down in a cow at milking?

Oxytocin, released from the pituitary when the udder is stimulated, makes the muscle-like cells wrapped around the udder's tiny milk-filled sacs contract, squeezing the milk down into the ducts.

Which US state has stamped 'America's Dairyland' on its licence plates since 1940?

Wisconsin led the nation in dairy from 1915 and made 'America's Dairyland' its official slogan in 1940; California's far larger farms overtook it in milk output in 1993.

What is a young female cow that has not yet had a calf called?

A heifer normally gives no milk until she has had her first calf, which is why dairy farmers breed her young, at little more than a year old.

To which continent are guinea fowl native?

Africa: every guinea fowl species is native south of the Sahara; one of them was tamed and is now farmed on other continents, where it is valued for eating huge numbers of ticks.

Why do some poultry keepers add a few guinea fowl to the farmyard?

They shriek at intruders: guinea fowl raise a loud, harsh alarm at anything that disturbs them, which makes them feathered watchdogs, and they also eat large numbers of ticks.

What distinguishes a guinea fowl's head from a partridge's?

It is featherless: guinea fowl have bare-skinned heads, and one species, with its long naked neck as well, looks so like a vulture that it is named the vulturine guinea fowl.

What is a young male chicken called?

A cockerel is a male chicken under a year old; as he matures he starts to crow, a loud call that warns rival males off his territory.

Which South American wildfowl was domesticated separately from all other farm ducks?

The Muscovy, a perching duck of Central and South America, was domesticated separately by indigenous peoples and crossed with common farm ducks to produce the meaty mulard.

What shape do the dark stripes on most donkeys' backs form?

A cross: a dark stripe along the spine meets a second running down behind the neck; breeders call these 'primitive markings', because wild horses and zebras carry the same kind of stripes.

What is true of mules and hinnies as breeding animals?

They are usually sterile: these hybrids inherit 63 chromosomes, an odd number that cannot pair up evenly when sex cells form, so nearly all of them are unable to breed.

On which continent did horses first evolve, then die out until the Spanish brought them back?

North America: horses arose there over some 50 million years and crossed the Bering land bridge into Asia, then vanished at home after the last ice age, so its wild herds descend from Spanish imports.

What are hens doing when they stop laying, usually in autumn, to shed and regrow their plumage?

Moulting: hens shed and regrow their plumage, usually each autumn, and lay nothing until it has grown back; some egg farms deliberately trigger a moult to bring tired hens back into lay.

An egg that floats in a bowl of water is most likely what?

Stale: an egg loses moisture through its shell as it ages and the air cell at its blunt end grows, so a very old egg floats while a fresh one sinks.

What did the Romans break up in their plates, believing it stopped evil spirits hiding?

Crushed eggshells: after eating an egg the Romans broke the shell into their plates, believing evil spirits could otherwise lurk inside it.

What mainly decides how deep a yellow a hen's egg yolk turns out?

Pigments in her feed: hens given yellow maize or green plants lay golden yolks, a diet without such pigments gives almost colourless ones, and some farms add marigold petals to deepen the shade.

Which two types of domestic water buffalo are recognised?

River and swamp: the river type, domesticated in western India about 6,300 years ago, spread as far as Egypt and Italy, while the swamp type was domesticated in southern China or Southeast Asia.

Where did a large feral water buffalo population establish itself in the late 19th century?

Northern Australia: buffalo shipped from Timor for British military outposts on the Cobourg Peninsula ran wild when the settlements were abandoned, and by the 1880s hunters were shooting them for hides.

Linnaeus's 1766 scientific name for the domestic yak translates as what?

Grunting ox: Bos grunniens suits an animal that grunts and squeaks but is not known to moo like other cattle; its wild ancestor carries the opposite name, Bos mutus, the 'mute ox'.

Which ostrich product made fortunes for South African farmers around 1900, when fashion demanded it?

Feathers: plumes for ladies' hats made ostrich farmers rich until the market collapsed in 1914, undone by war, overproduction and open-topped cars that made big feathered hats impractical.

Which people of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland are known for herding reindeer?

The Sámi have long followed their reindeer between seasonal pastures, and in parts of the Nordic countries the law now reserves reindeer herding for them alone.

What is an adult female sheep called?

A ewe is an adult female sheep; most are mated in autumn and carry their lambs for about five months, so that the young arrive in spring.

The domestic silkworm's preferred food is the leaves of which tree?

White mulberry: Bombyx mori caterpillars eat almost nothing else, and after at least 5,000 years of silk farming the domestic moth can no longer fly or survive without humans.

Guinea pigs were first domesticated, as a source of meat, by peoples of which region?

The Andes: guinea pig, or cuy, is still eaten there, and a Last Supper painted for Cusco's cathedral in the 1750s sets what is usually taken for a cuy on the table before Christ.

Feral pigeons in towns and cities descend from which wild bird?

The rock dove nests on cliffs and rock ledges, which is why its feral descendants take so readily to the ledges of city buildings; people have kept and bred the birds for thousands of years.