How to Breed and Tame Every Animal in Minecraft
Feed two adults of the same species their breeding food to get a baby. Wolves, cats, horses and llamas must be tamed first, and parents rest 5 minutes.
So must donkeys, trader llamas and nautiluses. Every other breedable animal breeds straight from the wild, and a few never breed at all.
How breeding works
- 1.Hold the animal's breeding food and use it on an adult. Hearts rise from it, which means it is in love mode.
- 2.Feed a second adult of the same species. The two walk to each other from up to 8 blocks apart.
- 3.A baby appears and 1–7 experience drops.
Love mode wears off after 30 seconds if no partner turns up, so feed the pair back to back. Parents then wait five minutes before breeding again. Babies take 20 minutes to grow up. For most species, feeding a baby its breeding food takes 10% off the time it has left.
Animals follow you while you hold their food, which is the easiest way to walk a herd into a pen such as a chicken coop. A Lead handles the ones that wander off.
Breeding food for every animal
| Animal | Breeding food | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cow, Mooshroom, Sheep, Goat | Wheat | — |
| Pig | Carrot, Potato or Beetroot | — |
| Chicken | Wheat Seeds, Melon Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Beetroot Seeds, Torchflower Seeds or Pitcher Pod | — |
| Rabbit | Dandelion, Carrot or Golden Carrot | Flees unless you hold its food |
| Horse, Donkey | Golden Apple, Enchanted Golden Apple or Golden Carrot | Must be tamed |
| Llama, Trader Llama | Hay Bale | Must be tamed |
| Camel | Cactus | — |
| Wolf | Any meat including Rotten Flesh, any fish, Rabbit Stew | Tamed, full health, standing |
| Cat | Raw Cod or Raw Salmon | Tamed, full health, not both sitting |
| Ocelot | Raw Cod or Raw Salmon | The same fish wins its trust |
| Fox | Sweet Berries or Glow Berries | — |
| Panda | Bamboo | Bamboo growing nearby |
| Bee | Any flower or flowering block except Wither Rose, Open or Closed Eyeblossom and Golden Dandelion | Wither Rose gives Wither, Open Eyeblossom Poison |
| Turtle | Seagrass | Lays eggs |
| Frog | Slimeball | Lays Frogspawn |
| Axolotl | Bucket of Tropical Fish | You get the water bucket back |
| Sniffer | Torchflower Seeds | Drops a Sniffer Egg |
| Armadillo | Spider Eye | Cannot eat while rolled up |
| Strider | Warped Fungus | — |
| Hoglin | Crimson Fungus | Keeps attacking you |
| Nautilus | Any fish or bucket of fish | Tamed, full health |
Horses also eat Wheat, Sugar, Apples, Carrots and Hay Bales, and llamas eat Wheat. These heal, speed up a baby's growth and (except Hay Bales) help taming, but none starts love mode. Breed horses with Golden Carrots and llamas with Hay Bales.
Animals with special rules
Turtles, frogs and sniffers lay eggs
- Turtles swim back to the beach where they first spawned and lay 1–4 Turtle Eggs on sand. The eggs hatch in 4 to 5 in-game days and crack more often at night. Zombies trample them on purpose, so fence the nest in and light it. Each baby drops one Turtle Scute when it grows up, and five scutes make a Turtle Shell.
- Frogs lay Frogspawn from the bank: standing on land, a frog places it on the water right beside the block it stands on. It hatches after 3–10 minutes into 2–5 tadpoles, which become frogs after 20 minutes. The biome a tadpole grows up in decides the frog's colour, not its parents, so carry tadpoles in a Bucket of Tadpole to a warm or cold biome for the other variants.
- Sniffers drop a Sniffer Egg. Placed, it hatches in 20 minutes, or 10 on a Moss Block, and the snifflet takes 40 minutes to grow up. Your first egg comes from suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins, covered in archaeology and sniffers.
Pandas need bamboo, lambs mix colours
- Pandas only breed with at least one bamboo plant, not a shoot, within 7 blocks sideways, level with their feet or up to two blocks higher. Without it they shake their heads instead. Brown and weak are recessive: a cub usually needs the gene from both parents, though each gene also has a 1 in 32 chance to mutate.
- Sheep with compatible dye colours produce a mixed lamb: a blue and a white sheep give a light blue baby. Colours that cannot mix give one parent's colour at random.
Taming, animal by animal
| Animal | How to tame | Chance per try |
|---|---|---|
| Wolf | Bone | 1 in 3 |
| Cat | Raw Cod or Raw Salmon | 1 in 3 |
| Parrot | The same seeds or Pitcher Pod that breed chickens | 1 in 10 |
| Nautilus, Zombie Nautilus | Pufferfish or Bucket of Pufferfish | 1 in 3 |
| Horse, Donkey, Mule, Zombie Horse, Llama, Trader Llama | Mount it empty-handed until it stops throwing you off | Rises after every failed try |
Keep feeding until hearts appear. A hostile wolf cannot be tamed. Stray cats walk up to a player holding raw fish within 10 blocks, so stand still and let them come. Kittens bred from your tamed cats are yours too.
Never give a parrot a Cookie. It dies instantly.
Unleash a trader llama from its wandering trader first, and remove the rider from a zombie horse or zombie nautilus. The horse taming guide has the temper each food adds and covers saddles, armour and breeding for speed.
Trust instead of taming
- Ocelots never become cats. Raw Cod or Raw Salmon has a 1 in 3 chance to win an ocelot's trust, after which it stops fleeing and never despawns.
- Foxes cannot be tamed. Breed two wild foxes with berries and the baby trusts the player who bred them, even once it grows up.
Mounts that skip taming
- Camels are naturally tame: put a Saddle on and two players can ride. Their speed and dash are in the horse guide.
- Camel Husks spawn in deserts at night or in thunderstorms, carrying a Husk and a Parched. Remove both riders and it turns passive and rideable. A Rabbit's Foot tempts and heals it.
- Happy Ghasts start as a Dried Ghast. Waterlog it for about 20 minutes to get a ghastling, which grows up in another 20 minutes; each Snowball takes 10% off. Fit a Harness of any colour, such as a White Harness, and up to four players can ride.
- Skeleton Horses come tamed from a skeleton trap, a lone skeleton horse spawned by storm lightning. Walk within 10 blocks, even after the storm, and it becomes four skeleton horsemen. Kill the riders and saddle the horses.
Animals you cannot breed
Parrots, Mules, Skeleton Horses, Zombie Horses, Zombie Nautiluses, Camel Husks, Happy Ghasts and Sulfur Cubes never breed. A small Sulfur Cube still grows large in 20 minutes, sooner if fed Slimeballs.
You cannot hand-feed villagers. They breed once they have picked up enough food (3 Bread, or 12 Carrots, Potatoes or Beetroots) and there is a free bed for the baby. A villager breeder handles both.
Why your animals will not breed
- Hurt pets heal instead. A tamed wolf, cat or nautilus below full health spends the food on healing. Feed it until it is full, then feed again.
- Sitting pets. Both wolves must be standing, and at least one of two cats.
- Rolled-up armadillos. Wait for it to unroll before offering the Spider Eye.
- Cooldown. Parents that bred in the last five minutes ignore food.
Wolf armour, cat gifts and parrot behaviour are in wolf armour and every pet.