Hay Bale

"Spring is ruined, all thanks to hay. Hay, you traitorous snake. That's why we prefer hay bales in Minecraft, where instead of ruining our lives, they sometimes save them. Landing on a hay bale in the game reduces any fall damage by 80%. That means you could potentially fall from a hundred blocks high and survive. Just. Our legal team cannot stress enough that you should only try that in Minecraft."

- Tom Stone

Hay bales are decorative, flammable blocks that can also be used to feed horses, breed llamas, and reduce fall damage.

Obtaining
Hay bales can be mined using any tool, or without a tool.

Natural generation
Hay bales can spawn scattered around in plains villages often very commonly, also in savanna and desert villages, but not as common as in plains villages. They also can spawn as a part of targets/scarecrows in pillager outposts.

Food item
While not edible by players, hay bales can be a useful compact food supply for long periods away from other food sources.

Horses
"Foals that eat hay bales will actually grow into horses faster. Because who needs a rich and fulfilling childhood when you can just eat your way to the responsibilities, disappointments and baldness of adult life early? Don't do it, foals! Embrace your youth!"

- Tom Stone

Hay bales can also be fed to horses, donkeys, or mules to heal up to 10 hearts. They are an effective method to heal horses if the player wants to heal them in a short period of time. They also speed up the growth of foals by three minutes.

Breeding
Hay bales can be used to breed llamas.

Falling
Falling onto a hay bale reduces the fall damage by 80%, meaning whatever falls on a hay bale only takes 20% of the normal fall damage.

An unarmored player with full health and no effects can fall as far as 100.27 blocks onto a hay bale, and still survive with health remaining.

Campfires
Placing a hay bale under a campfire makes it a signal fire, increasing the height to which its smoke particles can rise from 10 blocks to 25 blocks.

Composting
Placing a hay bale into a composter has an 85% chance of raising the compost level by 1.

Placement
Hay bales can be placed pointing in all three spatial dimensions, in the same way as log is placed. However, there is no fourth "bark block" variant.

Block data
In Bedrock Edition, hay bales use the following data values:

Trivia

 * Once placed, it can be destroyed but not be picked up in Adventure mode in Legacy Console Edition