Cow

A cow is a common passive mob and a source of leather, beef and milk. Cows are found in most grassy biomes.

Natural generation
$$, herds of 2 to 3 cows spawn on grass blocks at a light level of 9 or higher with at least 2 blocks of space above, except in snowy tundras, meadows and wooded badlands plateaus. Cows commonly spawn individually above grass after world generation.

$$, herds of 4 cows spawn on grass blocks at a light level of 7 or higher with at least 2 blocks of space above, except in snowy tundras, meadows and wooded badlands plateaus. Cows rarely spawn individually above grass after world generation.

Cows have a 5% chance of spawning as a calf, or baby cow.

Villages
A cow spawns inside animal pens and butchers' houses in villages.

Mooshrooms
Shearing a mooshroom turns it into a cow and drops 5 mushrooms corresponding to the type of mooshroom.

Drops
Adult cows drop:
 * 0–2 s. The maximum amount is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 5 with Looting III.
 * 1–3 s (or s if killed while on fire). The maximum amount is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 6 with Looting III.
 * experience orbs are dropped when killed by a player or tamed wolf.
 * experience upon successful breeding.

Baby cows drop neither items nor experience.

Behavior
A cow wanders around aimlessly, mooing and huffing in small herds occasionally. Addicionally, cows tend to:
 * go to lit and grassy places.
 * sometimes look at players within eight horizontal and four vertical blocks for two to four seconds.
 * avoid going to water unless they are following players and always avoid traversing minecart rails and walking off cliffs high enough to cause fall damage.
 * avoid environmental hazards, such as fire, lava, cactus, sweet berry bushes or dripstone, but make no attempts to avoid explosions.
 * cows can step on pressure plates, jump on dripleaves or farmland and climb ladders, stairs, vines and cave vines.

A cow quickly flees for a few seconds when harmed.

Milking
An adult cow can be milked by a bucket on it, yielding a milk bucket, useful for backing cakes and to remove any status effects.

Breeding
A cow follows a player who holds wheat but stops following if separated from the player by at least 6 blocks. Adult cows enter love mode and pair off to create calves after they are given wheat, granting the player one to seven experience orbs. The parent cows have a cooldown of 5 minutes before they can breed again. Babies follow adult cows and take 20 minutes to grow up. The growth of baby cows can be slowly accelerated using wheat; each use takes 10% off of the remaining time to grow up.

ID




Entity data
Cows have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Trivia

 * Cows are visually based on the Norwegian Red cattle.
 * Cows in the PC Gamer Minecraft Demo are branded with a 'PCG' logo on their side.
 * Notch stated in a Tumblr post that all "breedable" peaceful mobs displayed traits of both genders and could breed with any other individual of their species. This applies to cows as they have horns and give milk (although, in some breeds, female cows also have horns).
 * Cows prefer to stay on lit places to dim places.