Farm Animal Trivia
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150 free Farm Animal trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Farm animal trivia questions with answers. Farm animals are the ones everybody thinks they know, which is what makes a quiz about them so satisfying. These 150 questions cover the seven creatures on almost every farm: how many compartments a cow's stomach really has, why a pig wallows, what shape a sheep's pupils are, and what a castrated chicken, sheep and horse are each called. There are numbers worth remembering too — the world's 26.5 billion chickens, the hen that laid 371 eggs in 364 days, the 44 teeth in a pig's jaw, and the four inches in a hand. Wild ancestors get their own run of questions, from the aurochs to the mouflon and the bezoar ibex. Every answer was checked against a primary reference before publication, so the figures and terminology here are accurate rather than farmyard folklore. It works for a family game, a classroom round or a country show quiz, with a difficulty range that suits children and adults playing together.
30 of 150 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many compartments does a cow's stomach have?
Four
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.
Q 02What is the name of the first and largest compartment of a cow's stomach?
The rumen
The rumen is the first and largest compartment; its microbes ferment grass the cow cannot digest alone, and ruminants take their name from it.
Q 03What is a cow doing when it chews the cud?
Re-chewing regurgitated food
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.
Q 04Cattle are colour-blind to red, so what makes a fighting bull charge the matador's cape?
The way it moves
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.
Q 05What is a young female pig that has not yet had piglets called?
A gilt
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.
Q 06Which of these mammals carries its young for about as long as a cow does?
A human
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.
Q 07From which wild animal were cattle domesticated?
The aurochs
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.
Q 08What name is given to the two-toed hoof of cattle, goats and pigs?
A cloven hoof
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.
Q 09In a 2007 study, protein fragments from which dinosaur's fossil bone most closely matched a chicken's?
Tyrannosaurus rex
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.
Q 10Which wild bird are chickens mainly descended from?
The red junglefowl
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.
Q 11What is a young female chicken under a year old called?
A pullet
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.
Q 12What is a castrated male chicken called?
A capon
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.
Q 13How long does a fertile chicken egg take to hatch?
About 21 days
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.
Q 21Which dog breed is famed for herding sheep with a fixed, intense stare known as 'the eye'?
The Border Collie
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.
Q 22What shape are a sheep's pupils?
Horizontal slits
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.
Q 23Which wild animal are sheep most likely descended from?
The mouflon
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.
Q 14What are the fleshy flaps hanging under a chicken's beak called?
Wattles
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.
Q 15Chickens have no teeth, so which muscular organ grinds up their food?
The gizzard
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.
Q 16A male pig's tusks are overgrown versions of which teeth?
The canines
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.
Q 17What is the term for a sow giving birth to piglets?
Farrowing
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.
Q 18What is the main reason pigs wallow in mud?
To cool themselves down
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.
Q 19What is 'rooting' in pigs?
Nudging the snout into something
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.
Q 20What is a castrated male sheep called?
A wether
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.
Q 24Which sheep, born in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell?
Dolly
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.
Q 25What is the usual word for a group of sheep?
A flock
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.
Q 26Which wild animal is the likely ancestor of domestic goats?
The bezoar ibex
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.
Q 27Why will a goat chew on cardboard, paper or clothing?
It tastes to test for food
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.
Q 28What makes 'fainting goats' topple over when they are startled?
Their muscles lock stiff
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.
Q 29What is a castrated male horse called?
A gelding
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.
Q 30What is a person who trims and shoes horses' hooves called?
A farrier
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.