Pig Farmer Math 2

In an effort to make math more interesting for kids and to make my kids understand that math really is important.  Farmer Math questions to go along with the Flat Aggie reports or can be used separately.  These are patterned after the blog Bedtime Math.  Some of the questions are easy enough for pre-schoolers and sometimes I come up with some to even challenge high school seniors.

These questions follow the report Flat Aggie visits Anderson Farms Hog Operation.  Additional educational materials can be found in the post All About Pigs.  There are additional Pig Farmer Math Pages.

1.  A sow is pregnant for 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days.  How many days is that assuming a month is 30 days long?

2.  A rectangle shaped gestation pen is 10 feet by 12 feet.  What is the perimeter of the pen?

Farmers like to know how fast their pigs are growing.  They measure their weight often and use their age or the number of days they have been fed to come up with ratios they can compare to other groups.

3.  The piglets on Anderson Farms weigh 14 pounds at 21 days old.  What is their weight per day of age?

4.  The pigs are fed an additional 160 days after they are weaned.  The finished weight is 280 pounds.  What would their average daily gain be if they weighed 14 pounds at weaning?

5.  Anderson Farms has some large grain bins that they store the pig feed in.  If the bin is 24 feet tall (before the roof) and the 12 radius is feet, what would the volume of the grain bin be rounded to the nearest whole number?  Farmers measure grain bins in bushels instead of cubic feet.  If a bushel equals 1.2445 cubic feet, how many bushels will the grain bin hold?

6.  If the roof is a cone that is 5 feet high what would its volume be?

ANSWERS:

1.) 114 days  2.) 44 feet   3.)   .66667 pounds per day of age (14/21)  4.)  1.67 pounds per day  (280-14)/160  5.)  10852 cubic feet, 8720 bushels  6.)754 cubic feet, 606 bushels

If you are a teacher or homeschooler that would like more information to go with the Flat Aggie reports, send me a message on my contact form.  Along with the report and the Farmer Math questions, we send each teacher an additional page of activities, crossword puzzles and sometimes a few hands on activities.

-A Kansas Farm Mom