Breeding



Breeding is a game mechanic that allows fed animals of the same species to breed with each other to make new animals. Animals will follow a player holding wheat if the player looks at the mob, and will continue following the player until it is out of range, fed wheat, or until the player stops holding wheat. They may only breed once per wheat given, as long as they are not following their offspring.

Current Mechanics
Since Beta 1.9 Pre-release 3, Pigs, Sheep, Chickens, and Cows enter "love mode" if fed one wheat. Animals in "love mode" emit hearts constantly and will path towards nearby animals of the same species that are also in love mode. After about a second, a baby animal of the same species spawns on the same block as one of the parents, which also ends love mode for the parents. They will not be able to enter love mode again for five minutes. After the baby animal has spawned, the parents will follow it, staying close and sometimes circling counter-clockwise around it. Hitting a parent will stop it from following the baby.

Currently, all animals require wheat to breed. One wheat per parent is needed to breed a single baby. More than one can be used to make breeding a little faster, but this is a waste of a resource that is relatively difficult to acquire, time-wise. When sheep are born, they will be the color of one of their parents (See:Wool Dyes). Shorn sheep will continue to produce babies of their original color.

Animals are uninterested in wheat lying on the ground. Using wheat to breed animals that give food (cows, pigs, chickens) is a more effective way of getting food than making bread.

Ranching
Animals in an open setting may be difficult to breed. It may be easier to construct fences for animals to stay. Even a medium size pasture can result in animals neglecting to notice one another in love mode. Animals will spawn in the same square as their parent. It should be noted, however, that if they are in the same square as a fence, glass pane, or other item that takes up only part of a square, offspring may spawn in or on the other side of the block.

Pigs, Chickens, Cows, and Mooshrooms can all provide food when killed - this food will be cooked if they are killed with fire. Cows and Mooshrooms additionally drop leather, and Chickens drop feathers. Sheep drop one wool when killed, but it is more productive to shear them, whereas they drop 1-4 wool. One dye can be used to color their wool before shearing or breeding, which is more efficient than dying the single wool after killing. Dyed sheep produce offspring of their current color. Eggs can be harvested from Chicken farms, and can be used in addition to chicken breeding to speed population growth, as they have a 1/8th chance of producing a baby chicken when thrown. Cows can be milked with a bucket, and Mooshrooms can be 'milked' for Mushroom Stew using a bowl. Mooshrooms can also be sheared for 3-5 Red Mushrooms, although this will turn them into normal Cows.

Automated Animal Farms and Mass Breeding


Small scale automated breeding systems can be built by herding passive mobs into moving minecarts and summoning them to a central breeding location - this has the disadvantage of still breeding new mobs relatively slowly (one every five minutes.) Also, when saving and loading the game the mobs will "escape" from the minecarts - this can be dealt with by "storing" them inside of glass blocks. An example can be seen at DocMs Automated Breeding Machine.

Mass animal breeding farms can be built by "Compressing" mobs into a very small number of squares using the CMC system. Mobs are "Squeezed" into a small area (Generally a three high 3x1 chamber) by pushing the walls around them closer with pistons, these animals can be bred to produce new animals that will remain trapped inside the enclosure and can be bred themselves - meaning that many many mobs will eventually be stored in the same square and can be fed simply by "Spamming" stacks of wheat into the enclosure. If starting with two mobs and feeding them for an hour while using this system (assuming no missed feedings or killed mobs) 56 adults and 28 baby mobs will be held inside the 3x1 cell. After two hours this would increase to 2349 adults and 1174 offspring.

Chickens can be fed through a half slab in the side of the enclosure or from above through a hole in the middle, other mobs can also be fed through a 1 wide hole in the side of the enclosure without any risk that they will escape. Feeding the mobs once while harvesting, and once between harvests, is enough to keep mobs at roughly their current level - allowing the user to "dial in" the amount of mob drops gathered per harvest.

For a tutorial on building the farm, and automatic harvesting, watch Cake's Mob Compressor System

Baby Animals
Baby animals are smaller variations of their parents, having small bodies, seemingly big heads (due to proportional illusion), higher pitched sounds, and faster walking speeds. They do not drop resources or experience, primarily to balance the breeding. Baby cows can be milked, and although it is possible to shear baby sheep and recieve resources, only adult animals will drop food resources. As of the 1.0 update baby sheep drop wool. Baby animals grow into full sized animals after twenty minutes, which is one day in game time.

The parents will follow a baby as it wanders. However, they might not follow their own offspring. If two pairs of animals breed too close, there is a chance that both pairs will follow the same baby. The parents will not stop following the baby after it is fully grown. In solo you can leave and enter the world again to have parents stop following any baby whether full grown or not, but they will not be able to reproduce until 5 minutes have passed.

History
Breeding is a game mechanic first introduced in Beta 1.9 Pre-release 2.

During the early developments of Breeding, Notch tweeted : "You know what would be fun? If every single animal in minecraft came from eggs. Breeding would involve moving egg blocks around."

On the 9th of September 2011, xDerik tweeted "Can you confirm or deny animal breeding in 1.8?" to which Jeb replied "It's pushed to 1.9."

In Beta 1.9 Pre-Release 3, Notch added baby animals, the offspring of Pigs, Sheep, Chickens, Cows, and Mooshrooms; since Beta 1.9 Pre-release 3, the following mobs: Pigs, Sheep, Chickens, Cows, Snow Golems and Mooshrooms enter "love mode" when fed with wheat. When breeding was introduced in the Beta 1.9 Pre-release 2, all Sheep were born with white wool, irrespective of their parentage, but when Beta 1.9 Pre-release 6 came out, baby sheep can be either of their parents' colours, even if they were dyed. Animals are uninterested in wheat lying on the ground.

Before 1.0, if a Snow Golem was bred, it would start attacking other Snow Golems.

During Beta 1.9 no baby animals spawned and adult animals did. They could also breed instantly after "giving birth". This resulted in "spam breeding" allowing for over one hundred animals in a cage only big enough for two.

Bugs

 * In 1.0.0, while the parents of an animal are supposed to follow the baby, there is a bug where the parents still follow the animal long after it has aged into adult form making further breeding exceptionally hard since animals won't breed while following another animal
 * Shearing a baby sheep still yields the full amount of wool that can be obtained from an adult sheep. (possibly not a bug)
 * Animals in love mode need to be able to see each other to breed, but they don't have to be close to each other: for example, sheep in two different pens separated by multiple fences can breed if they are both in love mode and have seen each other.

Trivia

 * Mooshrooms and Cows can breed with each other, producing either a Cow or a Mooshroom. Whether this is an oversight or intended is unknown.
 * By definition, all Cows in Minecraft are female. Despite the lack of bulls, Cows are able to produce offspring. The same applies with Chickens, who lack Rooster counterparts.
 * If the player shears a baby sheep, it will become an adult Cow instead of a baby Sheep. This appears to be a bug.
 * The player can ride baby Pigs like adult pigs using the Saddle.
 * The saddle is not removed when the baby grows into a Pig.
 * The player may feed neutral wolves wheat to make them enter love mode, although they cannot produce offspring.
 * Since right clicking tamed wolves causes them to stay or follow, the only way to feed them wheat is to cause the bug that causes them to stay sitting forever.
 * Before the full release, Snow Golems also had the ability to enter "love mode" when fed wheat. If two Snow Golems were in love mode, they would fire snowballs at each other, causing them to step out of love mode and flee from each other. If the player somehow succeeded to bring the two together, it was possible to make a Baby Snow Golem.
 * Animals of the same species are able to breed with each other regardless of whether or not they are a parent to the animal they are bred with.