10 Best Farm Animal Toys & Sets for Toddlers in 2024
Ana
Cassie Sheets
When kids enter their toddler years many take a liking to different types of toys and get very interested in playing with all types of toys that have to do with that subject. A popular interest in toddlers is farm animals. It might be the cows, the pigs, or even the horses, but they really seem to captivate their interest. Farm animals that have been designed for this age group are perfect for interactive play and solo play. Each of the playsets offers different types of animals, but the key to getting their interest is handheld toys that they are able to move around and use their imagination to create scenes. We have created a list of the best farm animal toys for toddlers. This list contains the best sets that your little farmer in training will enjoy.
In a Hurry? The test winner after 15 hrs of research
Designed with 30 sound buttons and colorful illustrations
Hard cover protects the pages
Provides a multisensory experience
Entertaining to children
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World of Eric Carle, Around the Farm Book
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Melissa & Doug Fold and Go
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Green Toys Farm Playset
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Melissa & Doug Latches Barn
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Battat Big Red Barn 6 Pieces
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ALEX Toys String-A-Farm
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The Learning Journey My First Puzzle
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Learning Resources Jumbo 7 Pieces
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Boley Farm Animal Bath Bucket
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Little World Fridge Magnets 28 Pcs
10 Best Farm Animal Toys & Sets Reviewed
1. World of Eric Carle, Around the Farm Book
Designed with 30 sound buttons and colorful illustrations
Hard cover protects the pages
Provides a multisensory experience
Entertaining to children
Buttons could be larger
With Eric Carle’s book Around the Farm, your tot can experience the farm from the comfort of your home.
Read moreDesign
Each page is designed to keep young readers engaged. As they move through the book they will have the opportunity to press thirty different sound buttons. The Hardcover will protect the pages so your little one can easily transport their favorite book from place to place.
Entertainment Value
Your child will have a blast hearing the different sound effects for each button. In fact, when your child presses the button they will hear the name of the creature and the sound they make. The bright and colorful illustrations will also have them excited to follow along with the story. Your child will be introduced to a large quantity of animals including a snake, donkey, cat, and so much more.
Physical Development
Reading books with your child will not only improve their social skills but it will also strengthen the bond between you. Pressing the buttons will increase your child’s fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. The sounds and illustrations provide your child with a multi sensory experience that will stimulate their development.
2. Melissa & Doug Fold and Go
Realistic farm animals
Sturdy, wooden folding barn
Interesting and unique assortment of animals
Easy to transport, easy to set up
There are occasional runs in the red paint
The animals aren’t exactly proportionate
When it comes to portable, pack-and-go farm fun for your toddler, you need look no further than this set by toymakers Melissa & Doug. The attached handle makes it easy for your child to tote their farm set anywhere.
Read moreDesign
The set comes with a portable folding wooden barn, realistic plastic farm animals, and even a small ladder and folding corral for your child’s own miniature farm. And being made from sturdy materials, this set will be able to keep up with all the rough and tumble lifestyle your toddler can throw at it.
Entertainment Value
From goats to sheep dogs, from pigs to turkeys, your toddler will not be able to get enough of this farm set.
Physical Development
Aside from the very realistic figurines that will help familiarize your small child with a unique party of farm animals, this toy helps your toddler’s imagination and helps them build their own story.
3. Green Toys Farm Playset
Farm themed set with 14 pieces
Set includes; barn, a truck, a cow, a sheep, pigs, fence pieces, and a shed
Convenient storage with all pieces fitting inside the barn
Features handle on the barn for on the go fun
Constructed from 100% recycled materials, even packaging
Barn tips over easily
Inside barn only one room, no loft or stalls for animals
Help your little ones learn what a busy day on the farm would be like with this farm set. With all the mini-figures included, they are sure to have a blast.
Read moreDesign
The set includes everything that a busy farm would have. It features a barn, a truck that is a pickup style, a cow, a sheep, two pigs, four fence pieces, and a shed for the pigs. When the fun is all over the pieces fit inside the barn for easy cleanup and storage. On top of the barn, there is a handle that makes taking the barn on the go easy. Each of the items included with the set has been constructed from 100% plastic that has been recycled plus it contains absolutely no BPA, PVC, or phthalates. Even the packaging the set comes in has been constructed from recycled materials and has been printed with soy inks. To clean the items just place in the dishwasher and wash with a normal wash. Learning about the busy farm life is fun with this set and it is made from recycled materials is a total bonus.
Entertainment Value
On the barn, the little ones will find doors that open and close allowing them to drive the cows in and drive the pigs to a safe place. There is even a place in the back of the pickup truck to load the sheep in.
Physical Development
Farm toys are super fun to play with and just to imagine that they were once something else is neat. These toys have been created from recycled milk jugs. Using recycled milk jugs to create fun toys like these helps reduce the greenhouse effect and also saves energy.
4. Melissa & Doug Latches Barn
Durable latches, wooden barn structure
Multiple latch types
Animal friends to organize and count
Fine-tunes motor skills
Provides safe, educational free-play
Your toddler will know how to undo latches now!
This toy is a bright and friendly way to teach your child how to open and shut various types of doors, boxes, etc., all while familiarizing them with farm animals and locale.
Read moreDesign
Each door comes as its own small puzzle, with bright and beautiful paintings as a reward for opening the door. This set comes with four realistic farm animal figurines that your toddler can organize and get creative with while puzzling at all the latches. This portable farm is a great addition to any educational regiment for toddlers, and great way to teach them functioning knowledge of the world they live in.
Entertainment Value
This product from toymakers Melissa and Doug is sure to entertain your toddler as it trains them to operate various basic latching mechanisms to open the doors of their little play barn.
Physical Development
This portable barn really helps develop the tactile skills and fine motor tuning abilities of your toddler, all under the guise of innocent free-play. Teach your child the necessary threading and manipulation skills for opening doors and even eventually tying their shoes, while also connecting them with their favorite farm animals. With proper play, this product can also improve your toddler’s simple math skills as well their color recognition abilities.
5. Battat Big Red Barn 6 Pieces
Very realistic
Safe for toddlers
Comes with five figurines
Opens up to reveal a full playset
Comes with a handle for easy traveling
There isn’t too much detail inside the barn
The Battat Big Red Barn Animal Farm Playset is the perfect way to introduce your toddler to the world of imaginative play with various figurines and a specially-designed playset.
Read moreDesign
This farm features a bright yellow handle that makes it perfect for traveling with to a family member or friend’s house, as well as easy storing with its fold-up feature. Your child will have a choice of two classic barn colors, dark and bright red, and each comes with the most perfect set of figurines! Inside, your child will find a farmer and one each of his barnyard favorites: A sheep, cow, pig, and horse. Each animal, while it’s still designed to be completely safe for toddlers, has been created in adorable likeness to their real-life counterparts...The cow even has a bright red bell around her neck!
Entertainment Value
Your child will absolutely have a blast naming all of their new farm animals and will definitely get a surprise when they open up their playset to reveal a full barn. The barn itself features a loft that fits the farmer and one animal, as well as several animal pens that really look like the real thing. This is one farm that takes realism to the next level and it an outstanding choice for your toddler.
Physical Development
Every detail has been thought-out on this barn, from the silo to the sneaky little mouse that’s crawling across the front of the barn. It’s cute but realistic at the same time, making it an excellent option for your toddler’s first barnyard toy.
6. ALEX Toys String-A-Farm
Colorful, attractive to toddler’s eye
Simple and durable design
Develops their motor skills
Helps with hand/eye coordination
Helps you teach them simple math and vocabulary
Paint occasionally chips at edges
This amazing little set of string-along farm animals helps your toddler’s development in numerous ways with just the simplest design. Not only is this set beneficial to your child’s development but it will keep them entertained for hours as well.
Read moreDesign
The set comes with twelve farm-themed figurines and a thread, as well as a child-friendly wooden needle and stopper to help guide the animals and features onto the string.
Entertainment Value
While these animals don't make any sounds, your child will have a blast creating their own way to play
Physical Development
This award-winning toy helps your toddler develop motor skills and hand-eye coordination, as well as simple math skills and animal vocabulary. Teach them the names and sounds of all their favorite farm animals, let them organize their own little farm, and watch their cognitive abilities flourish. Also, if you have a toddler than is drawn to cables or cords, this toy serves as a safe and constructive distraction. The simple design is perfect for their little learning hands, and the bright colors are sure to draw their eyes.
7. The Learning Journey My First Puzzle
Multiple puzzles, lots of play-time for toddlers
Teaches cognitive and motor skills
Helps develop memory skills
Kids love the farm animals
Fun for multiple age levels
Being made of 100% paper, toddlers can destroy them
These puzzles will have your toddler puzzling along with you in no time, teaching them all the basic skills they will need to move on to bigger and better puzzles/games.
Read moreDesign
Each of the puzzles is designed with small hands in mind, with large simple shapes that promise to be more durable than smaller puzzles and toys.
Entertainment Value
The puzzles come with varying difficulties, starting at just 2 pieces and progressing up to 8 pieces, making them a perfect starting point for puzzling with your toddler.
Physical Development
These super-simple puzzles are actually designed for your toddler’s growing brain, helping them develop their problem solving skills while becoming familiar with all their favorite farm characters. The progressive difficulty in the puzzles is actually designed to move your child along in their cognitive processes, helping them become better real-life problem solvers as well as game players. Each puzzle also connects your toddler to the farm-life, and helps them develop a more powerful imagination.
8. Learning Resources Jumbo 7 Pieces
Large, durable
Friendly and relatively realistic
Proportionate
Great for identification and vocabulary building
Limbs and features don’t articulate or move much
With 7 jumbo animals, the opportunity for pretend adventures on the farm are endless. This set is large and durable, making it a perfect visual aid when teaching a group of toddlers or small children.
Read moreDesign
The simple durable design of these figurines make them a handy teaching tool for any parent or caretaker/educator.
Entertainment Value
This 7 piece toy set, with proportional and friendly farm friends, will provide your toddler with large and detailed recreations of all their favorite animals that can keep up with their wild imaginations.
Physical Development
These figurines will help your child learn the names of all their favorite farm animals, while getting a good handle of their respective sizes, colors, and anatomies. This product promotes the memorization and categorization of farm animals while giving your child tactile characters that they can carry with them and love for many years.
9. Boley Farm Animal Bath Bucket
Animals are designed with realistic features and colors
Easy for tiny hands to grasp
Silicone material provides a high level of durability
Stimulates development
A couple of reviewers experienced the toys having an odor
Children ages two and up can bring the farm to their bathtub with the Boley farm animal bath bucket.
Read moreDesign
Each of the twelve farm animals in this bucket are composed of silicone. The silicone material makes each toy water resistant, thus allowing them to be enjoyed during countless bath times. The animals measure between 3-4 inches long, thus making them easy to grasp by tiny hands. Designed with smooth rounded corners, they are perfectly safe for your child to play with.
Entertainment Value
With this bucket being an open-ended style toy, your child is free to unleash their imagination and create their own bath time adventures revolving around the animals. Included in the bucket is a dog, chicken, sheep, cow, horse, and several more. While the animals don’t make any noise, you can create a fun bath time game that encourages your child to make the sound of the animal they are playing with.
Physical Development
Each animal has been created to resemble the real life verison of the animal. The realistic features and colors will help your child make the connection between the real world and pretend play. Furthermore, it will enhance their ability to recognize animals. Grasping the toys will increase your child’s fine motor skills and fishing them out of the tub will improve their hand-eye coordination.
10. Little World Fridge Magnets 28 Pcs
Non-toxic
Durable
Conducive to a good vocabulary and a sharp mind
An easy means for tapping creative potential
Gets your toddler playing with their favorite farm animals
The laminated Cardboard front layer will not last as long the magnet itself
Who said farm animal toys have to be kept to the playroom? Let your child decorate the fridge, or create their own living white world of characters to play with!
Read moreDesign
The set comes with several horses, chickens, and other common farm friends for your toddler, as well as some inanimate features like bird house and a bucket of milk
Entertainment Value
These whimsical little magnetic depictions of farm animals are sure to be favorite for your toddler or small child, with over thirty little animated characters or features. This set is sure to provide limitless amounts of education and leisure for your toddler, as well as sprucing up any metal surface in your home or classroom.
Physical Development
This set of magnets provides several versions and variations of common farm animals to help build your toddler’s recognition and verbal skills. The magnets themselves are exceptionally durable as well as safe, and can be moved easily, allowing your child the freedom necessary to keep imagining and learning. This set is useful as interactive decoration, as a means for your child to build their own play world while creating a pleasing aesthetic and learning the joy of exhibiting their creativity.
Criteria Used for Evaluation
Design
The growth of a child is a miracle, and an opportunity to nurture the best aspects of ourselves while building the necessary mechanisms for resisting the worst. Toddlers display a most profound love in discovery: seeing, smelling, touching anything that crosses their paths with all the interest of a devoted scholar. It is our job as parents to facilitate a safe and optimal environment for this discovery, and to provide them with the attention that they will need for encouragement as they make their steady way to adulthood. All of the toys on our list are designed safely so that your child can enjoy playing with their farm animals
Entertainment Value
Your child’s first sensory experience came before they were even born, through touch, and the importance of hands-on learning for your toddler is still just as important. When they have a toy chicken present, they learn to identify the real chicken with much more ease, and even create new experiences for the toy chicken from behavior observed in the real chicken. This is a fundamental first step in building your child’s ability to play through imagination, which will help them communicate and relate to you and the other children around them in constructive ways. In today’s world, it isn’t uncommon for games on computers or mobile devices to quickly overtake play with tactile, physical objects. Research into the effects of overexposure to screens on children, however, would suggest that this substitute hasn’t yet produced the same sorts of benefits as tactile experience with actual objects. Furthermore, we added a wide variety of open-ended toys to allow your child the freedom to play as they please.
Physical Development
The developmental path of any toddler is a steep one: From the moment your child reaches the ambulatory phase, they are growing and learning so readily that your real struggle as a parent is finding enough new information to put in front of them. Names, faces, and new animals are constantly being cataloged away in the emerging structures within your toddler’s mind. We can use toys to expand the vocabulary and cognitive functions of burgeoning young brains and to introduce them to new worlds of discovery and learning. Now look to the farm, a veritable library of new information that will be invaluable in creating pathways to speech and imaginative play for your child. As previously mentioned, farm animal toys provide a basis for forming connections between objects and the words we use to identify them. Beyond this, these analogs will help your child identify and categorize new animals and objects based on the variety of animal stereotypes provided within the farm community. For example, a goose will be immediately distinguishable from a chicken, but not so different as a goat. The goose and chicken will soon become identifiable as birds, and the goats and cows as mammals, all because of the similarities and differences observed between them.
This sort of formulation in your child’s mind is not only a great wonder to behold, but also a key to their future comprehension of new things in their world. When you play with your child, you help teach them to play with others, and when your child plays with other children, they begin building whole new realms and concepts of play that will ready them for the next steps in their growth.
Design Entertainment Value Physical Development 
Playing with farm animals helps introduce your child to categorizing. For instance, they can pair together all the animals that are brown or that are big.
Playing with farm animals will also teach your child how to be compassionate to animals.
Other Factors to Consider
Social Development
When you give a toy farm animal or tractor to your toddler, it’s natural and highly instructive to start their play with imitation: helping them learn and recreate the sound of a cow mooing as they help it eat hay, or the rumble of a tractor’s engine as they push it through their sandbox. These sorts of tangible connections between the objects that they interact with at play will translate to their perception of the world around them, and help them begin to put the names to things. You can, for example, say the names of certain animals and have your toddler point to or retrieve the proper toy, a simple game that will have your child repeating and using the names themselves in no time. These sorts of open-ended questions in play also improve receptive vocabulary, fostering a deeper connection with the purpose of speech and forming a concrete bond between words and their associated meanings. Communication is the most important aspect of any relationship, and the sooner you can clearly speak to your child, the better you can care for them.
Frequently Asked Questions
q: Are any of these items a choking hazard?
No, these items are all designed for young toddlers. Most of the items are oversized and rounded in their features, making them gentle on soft hands but also impossible to swallow.
q: Just how tough are these toys?
This actually varies somewhat; the plastic farm animals and toy tractors are relatively indestructible to a toddler, with the exception of the axles on rolling toys. The wheels can be made to roll unevenly or fall off through extensive use. The wood product toys should be structurally secure for some time, but there are some reports of chipping paint with these products.
q: What age should my toddler be starting to associate animals with their sounds?
There’s no perfect answer to questions like this, as all toddlers will have different learning curves. If your child isn’t quite matching up with the standard timeline set, don’t panic. Do keep an eye on their development, try to work on areas that they struggle in, and consult a professional if you feel like there may be underlying issues. Typically speaking, toddlers will start to assign animals and noises between 12 and 18 months. If you want to help them with this skill set, try investing in books and toys that will allow you a visual and aural representation for children to familiarize themselves with.
q: Batteries included?
For the most part, batteries aren’t even necessary for these toys. The John Deere Animal Sounds Hayride does require AAA batteries, however, which are included.
q: How does playing with small toys like these farm toys help promote fine motor skill development?
Encouraging your toddler to play with farm animals is a great way to develop their fine motor skills. The grasping of the toys with their hand, the moving of the animals with their fingertips, and picking up the toys while moving their wrist creates the fine motor skills that help develop the skill set needed to write with a pencil, use scissors, and even grasp a spoon. This skill set is vital to their development.
q: Are small toys like the farm toys listed on this page safe for my three year old to play with?
When children are three years old they move away from exploring items with their mouths and learn to use their other senses. It is less likely that they will put the items in their mouth at this stage, but always review the package to better understand the age requirements of each item. Age restrictions are always placed on the packaging and are required by law.
q: Are these toys all interactive?
No, not every toy has an interactive feature. While features such as lights and sounds can often hold the attention of your child longer, sometimes it’s better if play time is left up to their own imagination. Interactive toys can be fun and improve sensory skills, but imaginative play increases creativity and allows children to really think and use logic and reasoning as well. A good mix of both toys makes for some great play options.
q: My child finds these boring. What can I do?
Not every child will find barns and farms fun to play with, but a good thing to try is adding other toys to the mix. Let them know that it’s okay to play with their favorite action figure inside their barn playset. You could also try encouraging this type of play in a group, since many kids just may not know how to start out with their own imaginative play. In a group, or even with siblings or cousins, they have access to more ideas and more kids to play with and overall, that will drive up their interest.
Sources
- , Developing Motor Skills, Informative Article
- , Toy Safety, Informative Article
- , Farm Animals, Blog Article
- , Educational Benefits of Providing Toys To Children, Informative Article
