Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Animal Farming in Minecraft

If you have just started playing Minecraft or have played it for a while now, you already know that surviving just on bread or apples won’t work. This is where animal farming comes in. It’s one of the easiest ways to get a steady supply of food, plus it gives you some really useful materials along the way.

Let’s take a moment and think about it. Cows give you meat for food and leather for bookshelves; likewise, sheep give you wool for beds and banners, and chickens? Well, they pretty much keep you stocked with eggs, feathers, and meat without much effort.

>So, if you are tired of running around to hunt animals for food, this is the best way to obtain an unlimited supply of all the resources. Let’s explore everything you need to know about animal farming, including the best animals for it.

Preparing For Animal Farming

Before you can set up any animal farm, there are a few things that you will need early on. Think of this step as building the foundation for a farm that’s not only useful but also easy to maintain.

Tools and Items

To get started, you don’t need anything too fancy, but a few basic items will make your life much easier:

1. Fences: To build a pen, you will need fences. You can go with regular wooden fences that are super easy to build and require minimal resources that you can easily get in the early game. If you’re feeling creative, you can also use walls or custom blocks, but wooden fences are the go-to.
2. Fence Gate: Along with fences, you will also need a gate for each animal pen. This will allow you to enter and exit that particular pen much easily, especially when you are building multiple such pens.
3. Bucket: These are quite useful for carrying water, since you are building a crop farm nearby.
4. Seeds: To lure the animals into your farming area, you will need specific food types such as Wheat for Cows and sheep. To grow this, you need seeds, which can be collected from grass on the ground.
5. Axe: This will be your go-to tool in building your farm. To build fences, gates, and any other items, you will need a lot of wood, which can be chopped using an axe. Start with the most basic iron axe and upgrade your way further.
6. Hoe: It is a necessary tool to grow wheat, carrots, potatoes, and beetroot for breeding animals.

Choosing the Perfect Location

Let’s talk about location. You cannot simply start a farm, whether it is a crop farm or an animal farm, on any random location. There are a few criteria that you need to consider.

1. Keep it close to your base: It's not mandatory, but it's definitely recommended to keep everything close to your base. You don’t want to hike across mountains every time you need beef or wool. Place your farm either inside your base walls or just outside your main build.
2. Water Source: If you’re planning a combo farm (animals + crops), having water close by is a big win. It saves you the trouble of carrying buckets back and forth.
3. Enough Space: You will need a lot of space to set up a full-fledged animal farm, especially if you are adding crop farming too. Pick a spot where you can expand sideways or create multiple pens in one area.

There will be a lot of other tools or items you might need as you start the process. Some also carry carpets, chests, and multiple other items for setting up an automated farm.

Setting Up a Small Crop Farm for Your Animals

Now that we have all the resources we need for the farm, let’s first start by setting up a small crop farm. Animal farms do not run on fences alone. In fact, to even lure the animals and then breed them later, you will need a few crops.

The farm doesn’t have to be fancy, but even a small patch of land will save you from running around trying to find wheat or carrots every time you want to expand your farm.

Step 1: Gather Seeds

As mentioned above, to grow the crops, you will first need seeds. The easiest ones are Wheat seeds, which can be collected by cutting down tall grass. It's found everywhere and anywhere in the overworld. You’ll need these for cows and sheep.

All the other seeds, such as carrots, potatoes, etc., can be found in villages, chests, and even rare zombies drop. These are needed to lure pigs, chickens, and rabbits.

Make sure to prioritize wheat first since it feeds both cows and sheep, which are the most useful early-game animals.

Step 2: Prepare the plot

Next, you need to prepare the land to farm the crops. Here is how you can do it:

1. Choose a spot near your animal pens. That way, you won’t need to travel far to feed them.
2. Clear the land of any grass or other trees.
3. Then, you need water. If you have any water source nearby, such as a waterfall, you can choose that area, or you can add a water block in the middle using a bucket. Each water block hydrates farmland within a 4-block radius. A simple 9x9 square is enough for your mini crop farm.
4. Now, use a hoe to till the land. Right-click (or tap) on grass/dirt blocks to prepare them for planting.
5. Add the seeds you have collected on this land and wait for the crop to grow, after which it will be ready for harvesting.

The best technique for laying down the seeds is in a row of each type of seed. You can plant two rows of wheat, one carrot, one potato, etc.

Step 3: Harvesting and Regrowing

Crops can take a few in-game days to grow. To speed up the process, you can use Bone Meal, which is crafted from the Bones collected after killing the Skeletons. This is super useful if you want quick food for animals or if you’re just getting started and don’t have patience for full growth cycles.

Once the crops are harvested, make sure to save some crops for replanting before using them on animals. Moving on, you can set up a proper crop farm near your animal farm to keep up with the number of animals you’re breeding.

How to Attract and Breed Animals

Next, we will be focusing on how you can attract the animals to your farm and collect them in their respective pens. Likewise, we will also talk about how you can breed animals.

Luring or attracting animals to your farm might feel tricky, but it is fairly easy. There are a few things you need to take care of.

Luring Animals With Food

Each animal has their own food preferences when it comes to breeding and luring them to their pen. Just hold the food item in your hand, and nearby animals will perk up and follow you around.

• Cows & Sheep: Wheat
• Pigs: Carrots, Potatoes, or Beetroot
• Chickens: Any type of seeds (wheat, melon, pumpkin, beetroot)
• Rabbits: Carrots, Golden Carrots, or Dandelions

Note: Animals tend to wander off if you are moving too fast while attracting or luring them with their favourite food. Walk slowly and lead them straight into your pen. Once inside, close the gate quickly so they don’t slip out.

Bonus Tips To Lure Animals

As mentioned above, animals can sometimes be stubborn, or you may not have the required food to lure them into the pen. In such cases, there are two things you can do.

• Boats: They are an extremely useful item in the game. You can use a boat to push any animal around, then row them across water or even on land. This is perfect if you find a cow across a river and don’t want to risk losing it.
• Leads: You can craft Leads by using string + slimeball and attaching them to any animal you want to, and bring them to the pen. It can also be tied to fences to keep animals in place.

If you are very early in the game and do not have the resources to build the above two items, you can always stick to growing crops and follow the traditional methods.

Breeding Basics: What You Need?

It's important to note that you need at least two of the same animals for breeding. Here is how you can breed them:

• Hold their preferred food.
• Right-click (or tap) each animal with the favourite food.
• Hearts will appear over their heads; this means they’re in “love mode.”
• A baby animal (mob) will spawn between them.

The baby will follow its parents around until it grows up (usually in 20 minutes). You can speed up growth by feeding it the same food again.

You can follow some breeding tips to understand more about how this works:

• After breeding, adult animals enter a 5-minute cooldown before they can breed again.
• During this time, you can still feed them, but they won’t produce more babies until the timer resets.
• Babies take about 20 minutes to grow into adults, but feeding them can reduce that time.

Basic Animal Farms (Cows, Chickens, Rabbits, Pigs, and Sheep)

It's time to set up an actual farm once you have lured all the animals into their respective pen. Here is everything you need to know about these farm animals and why each of these farms is necessary.

1. Cow Farming

They are one of the best animals to farm and beginner-friendly, too. They don’t just give you food; they’re a triple resource machine, and once you have a decent herd, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without them.

Let’s first check out what cows have to offer:

• Food: Cows give you Steak, which is one of the best food items in the game. When cooked, it restores a lot of hunger and saturation, meaning you stay full longer.
• Leather: This is essential for making books (needed for enchanting), bookshelves, armor, and item frames.
• Milk: One of the most underrated items in the game. Simply right-click a cow with a bucket, and you’ll get milk. This clears all potion effects instantly; super helpful when fighting witches or exploring the Nether. In fact, you can even stop a village raid from starting by simply drinking milk.

How To Attract and Breed Cows

Here is a short step-by-step guide on how you can lure the cows to the pen and then breed them.

1. Find the cows: Cows usually are found everywhere, but mostly in the plain and forest biomes.
2. Hold Wheat: You can hold wheat in your non-dominant hand, and the cows will follow you. Make sure to be slow and keep checking.
3. Lead them to the Pen: Take them into the pen and close the gates so that they do not run out.
4. Breed them: Then, feed the two cows wheat, and they’ll enter “love mode.” This is when a baby calf will spawn.
5. Repeat: There is a cooling period of 5 minutes after breeding. You can keep repeating it to increase the population. Furthermore, the calves grow up in about 20 minutes (faster if you feed them wheat).

Now, there might be a moment when you have had a lot of cows in the pen. This is when you can kill some of the cows and breed again. It is a great way to get the resources and continue with the breeding process as well.

2. Sheep Farming

Sheep are yet another animal that is super easy to farm, just like cows, and they also love wheat. They’re not just walking wool machines, but they’ll also save you tons of time when you need beds, banners, or carpets.

Let’s first check out what sheep have to offer:

• Wool: Needed for beds (to sleep and skip night), carpets, banners, and tons of decorative builds.
• Mutton: Sheep drop raw mutton, which you can cook for food (not as strong as steak, but still handy).
• Renewable Colors: You can dye sheep any color, and when they regrow wool, it stays dyed. That means you can collect unlimited colored wool once you have a few sheep. In fact, you can even breed two different colored sheep, and they spawn a colored sheep as well, which is a totally different color.

How To Attract and Breed Sheep

Let’s now check out the steps to attract and breed these sheep.

1. Find the Sheep: You can find sheep roaming around in the plains, hills, and forest biomes.
2. Lure them with Wheat: Just like cows, Sheep love Wheat too. Simply hold it in your off hand and lure them to the pen.
3. Breed them: Make sure you have at least two sheep in the pen for breeding. Feed them some wheat, and within seconds, a baby lamb will spawn.
4. Collect wool: Use shears to safely get 1-3 wool blocks without killing them. Their wool will regrow when they eat grass.

Note: It's important to have a sheep pen over grass blocks. Sheep constantly eat grass and grow their wool. Moreover, don’t waste sheep by killing them for wool; shears give you way more wool over time.

Dyeing Sheep for Infinite Wool Colors

This is one of the most interesting parts of Minecraft. You can dye Sheep wool of any color, and they keeps producing that color even after being sheared as many times.

First, let’s see how shearing and sheep wool work:

• Shearing Sheep: Use shears on an adult sheep to collect 1–3 wool blocks without harming them.
• Regrowth: Sheep only regrow wool when they eat grass (the dirt block they eat from turns to dirt, then spreads back into grass)
• Killing Sheep: Drops only 1 block of wool. Not worth it compared to shearing.

Here are the steps you can follow to dye the Sheep directly in their pen.

1. Hold a dye in your hand.
2. Right-click (or tap) on a sheep.
3. Its wool instantly changes to that color.
4. When it regrows wool, it keeps that dyed color forever.

Minecraft features 16 dye colors, most of which are derived from flowers, plants, or other natural sources. Later, these dyed wool can be used to craft beds, banners, and carpets.

3. Chicken Farming

Next up, we have chickens. They might look small, but they are the most useful animals in the game. Chickens are easy to breed, don’t take much space, and give you three valuable resources at the same time.

Why Farm Chickens?

Chickens have three things to offer:

• Meat (Raw Chicken): A decent food source, which becomes much better once cooked.
• Feathers: Essential for crafting arrows.
• Eggs: Useful for baking cakes, trading with villagers, or simply throwing to spawn more chickens.

The best part of having a chicken farm is that they give passive resources, such as eggs, without you having to do anything.

How to Attract and Breed Chickens

Let’s now check out the steps to attract and breed these chickens.

1. Find them: They spawn in most biomes (plains, forests, jungles, taigas).
2. Lure them using Seeds: Chickens are super easy to attract to their pens. You simply need to cut any grass on the ground for seeds. Hold it in your hand, and they will follow you. It can be any seeds: wheat, melon, pumpkin, or beetroot.
3. Lead them into your pen: They’re slower than cows and sheep, so you might need to be slow and patient, or they will wander off.
4. Breed them: Now that you have at least two chickens in the pen, you can feed them some seeds to initiate breeding and spawn baby chicks.

Using Eggs for More Chickens

What's unique about chicken farming is that you do not always need to find more chickens for their resources. Simply throw eggs on the ground, and there is a 1 in 8 chance that they will spawn baby chicks.

This makes expanding your chicken farm super fast compared to cows or pigs. Furthermore, you can even set up an automatic chicken farm where you use a hopper and a chest to collect as many eggs as you can.

4. Pig Farming

Let’s talk about how you can farm pigs. Many players do not go for this a lot of times since pigs are only meant for pork chops when killed, but they can also be ridden with a saddle, which is a pretty cool feature.

Surely they are not as beneficial as sheep or cows, but they work as an added food source on your farm.

Why Farm Pigs?

As mentioned above, there are two major things pigs are farmed for:

1. Porkchops: It is used as a solid food source. When cooked, pork chops restore almost as much hunger and saturation as steak.
2. Transport: With a saddle and a carrot on a stick, you can actually ride pigs around! It’s slower than a horse, but it’s a fun early-game travel method.

How to Attract and Breed Pigs

Let’s look at the steps on how you can attract and breed pigs:

1. Find Pigs Location: They are found in multiple biomes, such as plains, forests, and even around cherry grove trees.
2. Hold Food to Lure Them: Unlike cows, sheep, and chickens, three food sources can attract Pigs: Carrots, Potatoes, and Beetroot. You can grow carrots since they are also a food source for rabbits, making it easier to breed both.
3. Lead them to the Pen: Using any of the above foods, and lead them slowly to the pen, just like we did for all the other animals.
4. Feed and Breed them: Now that you have at least two pigs in the pen, you can feed them carrots, potatoes, or beetroots to initiate breeding. This will spawn baby piglets or baby pigs.
5. Repeat breeding: Like other animals, pigs have a 5-minute cooldown before they can breed again.

As for riding the pigs, you can craft a saddle, put them on the pigs, and ride on them. Right-click the pig with the carrot on a stick (fishing rod) to control its movement.

5. Rabbit Farming

If you are into potion brewing, then crafting a rabbit farm might be a great idea. They might be a bit challenging to handle than the others, but not difficult. Let’s learn everything about them.

Why Farm Rabbits?

There are a lot of interesting resources you can get from rabbits. Here are all of them:

• Raw Rabbit: Most importantly, Rabbits can be cooked into a decent food source (though not as filling as steak or pork chops).
• Rabbit Hide: It can be crafted into leather (4 hides = 1 leather). This can come in handy, especially when you’re short on cows.
• Rabbit’s Foot: This is kind of a rare drop, but extremely valuable for brewing Potion of Leaping.
• Rabbit Stew: A filling food made with rabbit meat, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, and a bowl.

How to Attract and Breed Rabbits

Here are the steps you can follow to attract and breed them:

1. Find them: They spawn in deserts, snowy tundras, and flower forests. Rabbits are also found in different colors, such as white rabbits, which are mainly found in deserts.
2. Hold Food to Lure Them: You can hold carrots, golden carrots, and even dandelions in your hand, which will allow rabbits to follow you.
3. Lead them to a Pen: Make sure you're careful with rabbits since they are jumpy and can be difficult to lead. If you, by any chance, do not have a carrot in your hand, they will run away from you
4. Breed them: Feed two rabbits carrots, golden carrots, or dandelions to breed them, and they will give a baby bunny.
5. Wait for growth: Baby rabbits take ~20 minutes to grow into adults.

Tips for Efficient Animal Farming

Now that we know which are the beginner-friendly farms and how you can set them up, let’s talk about how you can make them efficient. You don’t just want a pen full of animals—you want a farm that’s easy to manage, keeps you stocked with resources, and doesn’t turn into a chaotic mess.

1. Keep Your Crops Farms Closer

We have already talked about this above on how important it is to have a crop farm near your animal farms. You will need a constant supply of wheat for cows and sheep, carrots, potatoes, and beetroot for pigs and rabbits.

Trust me, you don’t want to be running back and forth across your world every time you need to breed animals.

For this, you will need a lot of space so that everything can be in proximity to each other. If possible, you can set everything near your base to have your own space where you have all you need.

2. Craft A Seperate Pen For Each Animal Type

You might already know this, but it still needs to be mentioned. We made the mistake of having all the animals in a single pen, and it was chaotic. The more you breed them, the number grows with it, and it becomes difficult to manage them all.

So make sure you have a separate pen for cows, sheep, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. It looks cleaner, makes farming way easier, and honestly feels more satisfying when each pen has its own little purpose.

3. Use Carpets and Slabs For Easy Access

Not a lot of players know this, but instead of gates, the best item to use is carpets to go in and out of a pen. Gates do work fine as well, but the animals tend to follow you and often come out as soon as you open the gate.

To avoid this, you can craft a carpet and place it on any side of the fence. Or you can even use a slab every time you wish to lure more animals in the pen, or even for yourself.

4. Try Settings Simple Automated Farms

These manual farms are perfect to begin with, but they are too much work when you are expanding. Instead of manually killing each animal or shearing wool from the sheep, you can set up a simple automated farm.

Using a few hoppers and chests, you can trap these animals in a system where they will breed but also die due to entity trapping, and give you the required resources. For a more accurate design, you can always check out different YouTube Minecraft experts.

5. Light Up The Pens

Lastly, you must light up your pens. There is always a high chance that creepers and other hostile mobs spawn at night, and they might kill all your animals on the farm.

To avoid this, you can use torches or lanterns around each of your pens. This will keep the farm well-lit and also keep the hostile mobs away, and you can sleep peacefully.

Final Thought

That is it from the Animal Farming guide. Well, once you build your first farm, you will understand how easy things get and how smooth it is to grab food anytime you need, before you start exploring the different parts of the Minecraft world.

Each of the animals mentioned above has something to add to your survival world, and once you get the hang of managing them, the game just feels smoother and more fun.

But wait! These aren’t the only animals you can farm. You can even start farming horses, bees, turtles, or even more advanced mobs like iron golems. Each opens up new resources and new ways to play.