Question

MM can someone answer this riddle

Animal riddle
In reply to an inquiry about the animals on his farm, the farmer says: “I only ever keep sheep, goats, and horses. In fact, at the moment they are all sheep bar three, all goats bar four, and all horses bar five.” How many does he have of each animal?

Answer 1

Here’s the answer & how to find it! So let us suppose,

X : the no. of sheep he owns

Y : the no. of goats he owns

Z : the no. of horses he owns

This means,

X + Y + Z = Total no. of animals he owns

He says that “They are all sheep bar three.” Which means, the no. of animals other than sheep is 3, i.e.

Y + Z = 3

Similarly,

X + Z = 4 and X + Y = 5

On adding all the three equations, we get

2 ( X + Y + Z ) = 12

This implies,

X + Y + Z = 6

This means that the farmers has a total of 6 animals. And on further solving the equations we find that the he has 3 sheep, 2 goats and a horse.