My friend who owns a farm nearby, has five droves of animals on his farm consisting of cows, sheep and pigs with the same number of animals in each drove. One day he decided to sell them all and sold them to 8 dealers.

Each of the 8 dealers bought the same number of animals and paid at the rate of Rupees 17 for each cow, Rupees 2 for each sheep and Rupees 2 for each pig. My friend received from the dealer in total Rupees 285.

How many animals in all did he have and how many of each kind ?

(Given: 1 Rupee = 100 Paise)

(In reply to Error in the question? by fwaff)

Put another way, if c,p and s are the numbers of cows, pigs and sheep, then
c+p+s = 40k
17c+2p+2s = 301
subtracting twice the first equation from the second:
15c = 301 - 80k
or
15c + 80k = 301
but the left side is a multiple of 5 and the right is not.

Posted by Charlie on 2003-03-10 05:10:56