A chicken farmer also has some cows for a total of 30 animals, and the animals have 74 legs in all. How many chickens does the farmer have?

** ans is not The farmer has 23 chickens. (and 7 cows).

This is a typical algebra problem with two unknowns, and we need to have two equations to solve the problem. Let X be the number of cows, and Y the number of chickens.

The number of cows plus the number of chickens equals 30:
X + Y = 30
Since cows have four legs and chickens have two legs, we can also have an equation for the number of legs.
4 X + 2 Y = 74
Rearranging the first equation we get
X = 30 - Y
Substituting X in the second equation gives us
4 × (30 - Y) + 2 Y = 74

120 - 4 Y + 2 Y = 74

-2 Y = 74 - 120 = -46

Y = 23

Everone is guessing so
This is humor quiz : so we should consider farmer's legs or even wife legs or