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About This Quiz
Time to check out some of the really cool pieces of equipment which can be found on a farm. E.I.E.I.O!
Gone are the sickle and horse-drawn plow. Mechanization and automation have revolutionized how farmers tend to their fields and rear livestock. Processes which once took days of intensive labor to complete can now be done in a matter of hours, usually with much better results. Will you be able to identify some of the pieces of equipment that have made that possible? Start the quiz and see!
Many of these tools are highly specialized to perform just one job while others combine more than one task for even greater efficiency. Quite often, a particular type of farming equipment is available in different sizes and varying degrees of complexity. Farmers then get to choose from a range of models, starting with more manual ones all the way to those that are fully automated.
A professional or hobby farmer will be familiar with all of the equipment in this quiz. If you're not a farmer but you are intrigued by the work farmers do, you might be surprised to realize you recognize most of these machines.Â
The challenge is to get 11 out of 40 correct, but you know you can do way better than that! Get started!
Cotton harvester
Grain cart
Strip till
Tractor
An agricultural revolution of sorts took place in the 1920s. This was when tractors evolved from being cumbersome steam-powered machines to smaller, cheaper vehicles using combustion engines. At that time, Ford Motor Company accounted for 75% of all tractors sold in the US.
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Hedge trimmer
Spring-tooth harrow
Pickup truck
At least one sturdy pickup truck is a necessity on every farm. Reportedly, the most popular pickup trucks in the US are made by Ford and Chevrolet, with the Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado being the most popular models.
Telescopic handler
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Bale wrapper
Bale wrappers come in two basic types. There are the individual wrappers, which wrap one bale at a time, and the inline or tube bale wrappers, which wrap several bales in one long row. (A third type is the combination baler-wrapper, which does the job of forming the bale and then wrapping it.)
Sugarcane harvester
Winnower
Utility trailer
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Hay fork
Chisel plow
The shanks or teeth of a chisel plow dig into the soil to turn it over. It's common to till the soil with a chisel plow after adding a soil amendment or conditioner, such as fertilizer, clay, lime or gypsum. A type of harrow can be used to smooth the soil out afterward.
Loader wagon
Broadcast spreader
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Grain dryer
Potato planter
Brush hog
Combine harvester
A combine harvester can be very expensive, but it's also a very efficient piece of equipment. This single machine can be used for reaping a crop, threshing it to separate the edible and inedible parts and winnowing the collected harvest by blowing air over it to get rid of the chaff.
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Stone picker
Air seeder
Spike-tooth harrow
Plows are used to for deep, primary tillage while harrows are used for shallow, secondary tillage after plowing. Apart from going over plowed land, the spike-tooth harrow is a good choice when the farmer needs to level out new soil which has been added to the surface of a field.
Soil sampler
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Rotary mower
Broadcast seeder
Row cleaner
Front-end loader
The front-end loader is a tractor with a wide bucket attached. It's often used to lift heavy, bulky items and load them unto another vehicle for transport. The bucket can be fitted with a toothbar when the front-end loader is required to do digging or land grading.
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Baler
Balers are categorized as round, rectangular and square, in keeping with the shape and size of bales which they produce. Before farmers had a baler at their disposal, hay needing to be dried and cured was piled into haystacks using hand tools such as a hay rake and a pitchfork.
Bean harvester
Shredder
Chain harrow
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Agricultural drone
The agricultural drone is an example of how technology can be incorporated into farm management. The drone is equipped with cameras and sensors so it can be used to monitor livestock, check fences for damage and relay information about soil condition and crop growth.
Chaser bin
Skid-steer loader
Cultipacker
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Bale lifter
Crop duster
Grinder-mixer
To make feed for animals, the farmer adds carefully determined amounts of ingredients to the grinder-mixer. Common ingredients are grains, such as corn and wheat, as well as nutritional supplements. The machine can be adjusted according to the required size of feed pellets.
Hay tedder
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Backhoe
The backhoe can be bought as either a hydraulic attachment to a tractor or as a separate vehicle. It's often used when the amount and depth of digging required makes digging by shovel inefficient. In cases where it's attached to a front-end loader, the result is sometimes called a backhoe loader.
Ridge plow
Swather
Rotary tiller
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Hedge trimmer
Front-end loader
Rotary hay rake
The rotary hay rake tends to be more expensive than other types of hay rakes. It is said, however, to do a better job of creating fluffy windrows for optimal drying. Rotary hay rakes are designed with one to six rotors that can be configured to produce single or double windrows.
Utility trailer
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Sprayer
Gravity wagon
The gravity wagon is designed with a chute or opening at the lower end. Unloading the contents of the wagon is easy since it's slanted. The grain or fertilizer naturally gravity feeds to the lower end of the wagon and out the chute! The gravity wagon is sometimes called a slant wagon.
ATV
Box drill seeder
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Seed drill
It's probably not surprising that a seed drill's used to plant seeds — usually in rows and usually in soil that's been prepared (tilled) for planting. One type of seed drill, known as a no-till drill, can be used to plant seeds in unprepared soil. It will also plant with much less soil disturbance than a traditional seed drill.
Rotary mower
Belt rake
Flatbed wagon
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Slurry spreader
Wheel tractor-scraper
Grain hopper trailer
Cultivator
The cultivator can be used on a seedbed before planting. As it passes through the soil, it uproots and kills weeds while stirring crop and weed residue into the ground. When cultivating around crops that are already growing, care must be taken to drive in a straight line!
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Brush hog
Rotary plow
Cotton harvester
The two basic types of cotton harvester are the stripper and the spindle. The stripper reaps both open cotton bolls and closed buds while the spindle leaves the unopened buds on the plant for the next reaping session. The stripper is useful in areas where reaping is done just once.
Wheel hay rake
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Power wheelbarrow
The traditional wheelbarrow has just one wheel, although there are a few two-wheel designs. A motorized wheelbarrow typically has four wheels or is designed with tracks that are beneficial when moving over slippery or rugged terrain. A power wheelbarrow saves on overall labor cost on the farm.
Grinder-mixer
Livestock trailer
Stump grinder
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Moldboard plow
Rice transplanter
No-till drill
Subsoiler
As its name suggests, the tractor-mounted subsoiler loosens lower layers of the soil (called subsoil). It's particularly useful in areas where soil compaction is an issue. Its action allows roots to grow deeper while making it easier for water to seep into the soil.
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Fence post driver
Thresher
Leaf blower
Potato harvester
The most modern potato harvester is a combine which automates digging, picking, cleaning, sorting and bagging of potatoes. A less efficient but cheaper method is to use a tractor with a potato haulm topper connected at the front and a potato harvester trailer attached to the back.
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Loader wagon
Ridge plow
Belt rake
Woodchipper
A woodchipper is both convenient and environmentally friendly. It allows the farmer to recycle downed trees and branches by turning them into either wood chips or finer sawdust. The chips work very well as mulch while the sawdust can be used to soak up oils in areas where machinery is worked on.
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Pasture topper
Tractor
Flail mower
The flail mower is often compared to the brush hog mower. Despite their names, it's the flail mower that's is the better choice for clearing brush from an area. The flail mower also has the advantage of being safer to use since it doesn't throw out debris in all directions the way a brush hog does.
Stump grinder
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Manure spreader
The manure spreader, or honey wagon, is a tractor attachment designed to automatically distribute manure to a field as the tractor passes by. As with any other type of fertilizer, it's wise to first determine what nutrients the plants need and what nutrients the manure contains before applying it.
Backhoe
Forklift
Livestock trailer
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Hay cart
Rotary tiller
Planter
The planter is most often used with the no-till method of farming to precisely dig trenches and insert seeds at controlled distances over a field. Planters are generally used with corn and legumes while the similar-looking seeders (or seed drills) are used with grains.
Flatbed wagon
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Straw shredder
Rice huller
Reaper-binder
This combination piece of equipment performs two tasks in one: cutting of the crop and binding it together in bundles for collection by another vehicle. Reaper-binders come in walk-behind models as well as self-propelled ones which the farmer can ride on.
Pickup truck
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Finger bar mower
Stone picker
Rocks and stones can cause serious damage to some farm equipment such as those used for mowing, harrowing and harvesting. The stone picker can help by digging up and collecting stones from the soil. It can also be used to collect stones that a stone windrower has already gathered up into rows.
Spike-tooth harrow
Subsoiler
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Manure spreader
Disk plow
Portable engine
Soil sampler
There are hand-held soil samplers that will work quite well when a relatively small area needs to be sampled. Large-acreage farms, however, will need to collect one sample per 2.5 acres and sometimes as many as one sample per acre. For this, a tractor-mounted automatic sampler works best.
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Hay fork
Chaser bin
The chaser bin collects produce from the harvester and empties it into a mother bin or grain hopper trailer. While the chaser bin is very handy, it can only be operated on or very close to a field. That's because in most areas it's illegal for a chaser bin to be taken out onto public roads of any kind.
Flail mower
Leaf blower
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Two-wheel tractor
The two-wheel tractor is cheaper than a traditional tractor and can be quite sufficient for a small farm. Attachments it can carry include seeders, harrows, mowers and chippers. It's sometimes called a walking tractor since the farmer walks behind and guides it as it moves.
Grain cart
Broadcast seeder
Grain dryer
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Woodchipper
Rice huller
There are design variations to the huller which can reduce breakage of individual grains of rice as well as polish the grains after hulling. Before rice hullers were invented, hulling involved manual beating or pounding of rice to remove the husks.
Baler
Box drill seeder
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Cultipacker
The ridged surface on the roller of a cultipacker smooths soil while helping the device to gain traction as it moves along. It can be used for seedbed preparation or after planting to ensure that the soil is pressed firmly around the seeds.
Two-wheel tractor
Crop duster
Agricultural drone
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Fence post driver
Strip till
Skid-steer loader
At first glance, a skid-steer loader looks very much like a front-end loader that's shrunk a couple sizes! It's configured differently, however, with the positioning of the arms making it useful for overhead work. It's small enough to be used indoors for jobs such a cleaning out barn stalls.
Wheel hay rake
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Spring-tooth harrow
Soil which contains plenty of stones and tough roots can be effectively cultivated by the curved and springy teeth of a spring-tooth harrow. It can also be depended on for light weeding of the soil as it passes through but will not work very well against tough weeds.
Potato harvester
Rotary hay rake
No-till drill
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Rice transplanter
The rice transplanter can successfully transplant more than ten times the number of seedlings in a single day than could be done manually. Rice transplanters can be bought either as the type you on and drive or as models which you walk behind and guide through the field.
Chisel plow
Reaper-binder
Forklift
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Power wheelbarrow
Potato planter
The most automated of potato planters will create a trench; drop the seed potatoes in at regular intervals and then cover them up with a mound of soil — all in one pass! Some planters will do just a single row at a time, but the larger machines can plant up to eight rows at once.
Rotary plow
Wheel tractor-scraper
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Log splitter
Hay tedder
The hay tedder does the opposite job of a hay rake. It spreads the hay out after it's been cut, but the hay rake gathers the hay back together again in windrows. Both processes help to ensure that the hay dries while preserving the right amount of moisture and nutrients.
Bale lifter
Planter
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Moldboard plow
Bean harvester
Broadcast spreader
Apart from seeds and inorganic fertilizer, the broadcast spreader can be used to add lime, gypsum and other soil conditioners to a field. Broadcast spreaders can be tractor-mounted, but there are smaller versions the farmer can push around the field.
ATV
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Disk plow
Shredder
Grain hopper trailer
The grain hopper trailer is filled either from the chaser bin (which was filled by the harvester) or from the mother bin (which was filled by the chaser bin). The grain hopper trailer holds more than the chaser bin and can be driven long distances over public roads to the next destination of the grain.
Thresher
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Air seeder
Sprayer
Sprayers range in size from small hand-held canisters to huge self-propelled machinery designed to work on large acreage farms. In between these, there are backpack sprayers and sprayers that can be mounted onto a tractor or all-terrain vehicle (ATV).
Combine harvester
Cultivator
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Bale wrapper
Sugarcane harvester
Most of the world's sugarcane is still reaped using manual labor: workers with machetes. In some cases, however, the sugarcane harvester (a kind of combine harvester) is the preferred method. It can cut, clean and chop up stalks of sugarcane, covering much greater areas in a day than manual reaping can.
Seed drill
Slurry spreader
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Gravity wagon
Chain harrow
Swather
Part of the hay-making process is mowing the grass (or other hay-making crops) and gathering it into windrows. This can be done in two steps using a mower and then a hay rake or in one step with the swather.
Winnower
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