Breeding



Breeding is a game mechanic that allows animals of the same species to breed with each other to make new animals.

Mechanics
Each type of "domestic" animal has a food item used to lead and breed it. (There are a few special cases, described below.) Once an animal notices a player holding its food, it will follow the player until either the player is out of range, the player stops holding the item, or it begins the breeding process. This includes baby animals. Note that animals are uninterested in food lying on the ground. One item per parent is needed to breed a single baby.

Love mode
If an animal is fed its food, it will enter "love mode", preparing to breed with another animal of the same species that is also in love mode. Animals that are in love mode emit heart particles constantly. When both animals are fed, they will path-find towards each other, up to eight blocks away. The two animals will "kiss" for about two and a half seconds, and then a baby animal of the same species spawns either in between the parents or on the same blocks as the parent that was spawned first, which ends love mode for the parents. Once the parents breed they also drop a small amount of experience. They will not be able to enter love mode again for 5 minutes, and they may only breed once per item given. However, they can still be herded with the appropriate material, as can the baby.

After the baby animal has spawned, it will follow its parents for 20 minutes before growing to full size. The growth of baby animals can be slowly accelerated using the animal's breeding item. Each use takes 10% off the remaining time to grow up, with the exception of horses where different breeding items speed up the growth by different amounts.

Villagers


Villagers do not have a food item; they will breed of their own accord (and in their own time) depending on the available houses, or at least "registered doors", (See the village page for full details.) and whether or not they have bread, carrots, potatoes, or beetroots in their inventory, or have been trading with the player. When they breed, they will produce a smaller Villager but unlike most baby animals, these don't have big heads, similar to cats. Baby Villagers will run around the village and will "play" tag. A baby villager killed by a zombie may produce a Baby Zombie Villager, depending on difficulty.

Breeding formula
A player may want to know how many mobs they will need in their farm to reach a certain goal, for example: to make a full-powered enchanting table with bookshelves (46 leather needed) or for full leather armor (24 leather), in case you have cow farm. So there is a formula to calculate how many mobs you will need to have at your farm, by the starting number and if you wait until all the mobs become mature (this does not apply to villagers):

where Xn is the number of mobs at generation n.

Alternatively, if you start with X mobs and want to reach a population of at least Y, it can be achieved in  generations.

Baby animals


Baby animals are smaller variations of their parents, having small bodies, relatively big heads, higher pitched sounds, and faster walking speeds. Lambs cannot be sheared for their wool, chicks do not lay eggs, and calves and mooshroom calves cannot be milked. Baby animals will follow one of their parents (within 8 blocks) until they grow up. (If the parent dies or there is none, they will pick a nearby adult of their kind.) Tame puppies and kittens will follow their owner if the parent is absent or sitting, and puppies will attack aggressive mobs just as a mature dog would. They do not drop loot or experience if killed (excluding baby zombies and baby zombie pigmen).

When lambs are born, they will usually be the color of one of their parents, chosen at random. However if the parents have 'compatible' colors (meaning that their corresponding dye items could be combined into a third dye), the lamb will be a mix of the parents' colors (see Wool Dyes). This holds true even if one or both of the parents have just been sheared before breeding and have not yet grown their coats back. This is a handy way to obtain wool of a color for which you do not have a dye. In Pocket Edition, however, lambs will not combine the colors of their parents.

Baby animals can be manually spawned by spawn eggs on a grown animal. This does not work on zombies or variants.

Baby animals may also be spawned using the command with a negative   tag; for example, using  will spawn a baby sheep at your position, that will mature in 100 ticks. For zombies, the  tag is used instead.

Trivia

 * Any two animals of the same species are able to breed with each other, even if one animal is the parent of the other.