Animal Husbandry
Claim farm animals, keep them fed and clean, and breed them for better meat, milk, eggs and materials.
Updated
What you need
All the tools are made at the Animal Station.
| Item | Cost | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership Token | 1 iron nugget | Claiming or renaming an animal. Used up. |
| Co-Ownership Token | 1 iron nugget | Sharing an animal with another player. Used up. |
| Glove | 2 Leather | Cleaning a dirty animal. Not used up. |
| Neutering Tool | 2 iron ingots | Stopping an animal from breeding. Used up. |
| Trough | 1 oak plank | Making Universal Feed. |
To make Universal Feed, place a Trough and right-click it with wheat or vegetables, 4 at a time, until all 4 spots are filled. Rotten food is refused. Then right-click the Trough with an empty hand to take 1 Universal Feed.
Claiming an animal
- Rename an Ownership Token at an anvil to the name you want for the animal.
- Right-click the animal with the token. Horses and other animals that need taming must be tamed first. The token is used up.
- Sneak and right-click the animal with an empty hand to see its owners, care, genetics and growth.
You can claim cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, horses, donkeys, mules, camels and llamas. Animals belong to the character who claimed them, but the limit of 15 counts every animal on your account, shared ones included. Bees are not part of husbandry.
Unclaimed animals vanish
Sharing and renaming
Right-click your animal with a Co-Ownership Token to link the token to it, then right-click another player with the token, or give it to them and let them right-click with it. Every owner can feed, clean, ride and breed the animal, and it counts towards each owner's limit. To rename an animal, use another named Ownership Token on it. The inspect menu also has a button to give up your ownership.
Feeding and cleaning
An animal is happy when it is neither Hungry nor Dirty.
Every 4 to 8 hours that its area is loaded, an animal becomes Hungry or Dirty, shown next to its name. Feed a hungry animal 1 Universal Feed and clean a dirty one with the Glove. Each time you do, you get a little Forager experience.
| Care | How it works |
|---|---|
| Gaining care | A happy animal gains 1 care per minute while its area is loaded, up to 200. |
| While you are away | When the area unloads, a happy animal can still gain up to 8 hours' worth of care. After more than 8 hours unloaded, it is Hungry or Dirty when the area loads again. |
| Losing care | If it stays Hungry or Dirty for more than 24 hours, it loses 1 care every 10 hours, even while unloaded. |
Care counts whenever the area is loaded, by you or by anyone else. It does not matter whether the owner is online.
Breeding and growth
Breeding most vanilla animals needs the Forager perk Breeder IV, bought in /profession. Breeding gives Forager experience. Breed animals with their normal Minecraft breeding food. Both parents must be grown, fed, clean and not neutered. If either parent is owned, you must own both. Wild animals start with 0 to 20 genetics and 0 care.
Babies inherit genetics from their parents, with a boost that improves when the parents are well cared for. Raise both parents' care before breeding. Higher-star breeding food also helps; food with no stars gives the same benefit as 5-star food. Genetics can reach 1,000 through breeding.
Babies take 1 hour to grow up (chickens 45 minutes) and look like babies until then. They have to be grown before they can breed, give milk or eggs, or drop meat.
Neutering is permanent
Products
| Animal | While alive | When killed |
|---|---|---|
| Cow | Milk with a bucket every 20 minutes. Sheds leather now and then. | Beef roast and leather |
| Goat | Milk with a bucket every 20 minutes. Shear for wool. | Goat roast and wool |
| Sheep | Shear for wool, with extra wool from well-bred sheep. | Mutton roast and wool |
| Chicken | Lays 1 egg an hour. Sheds feathers now and then. | Chicken roast and feathers |
| Pig | With 3 stars or more of genetics, now and then sheds Enchanted Dust. | Pork roast, sometimes Enchanted Dust |
| Horse, donkey, mule, camel | Nothing | A roast of that animal and leather |
| Llama | Nothing | Llama roast and feathers |
Only grown, happy animals lay eggs or shed. Wild cows and goats cannot be milked. A recently sheared sheep or goat drops no wool when killed. Carve roasts at a Meat Hook (see Cooking).
Genetics, care and quality
Breeding raises what an animal can give. Care decides how much of it you get.
Genetics sets an animal's potential, and care affects how much of it you get. Well-bred animals kept fed and clean give more meat and better food.
| Genetics | Star tier |
|---|---|
| 0 to 199 | 1 star |
| 200 to 399 | 2 stars |
| 400 to 599 | 3 stars |
| 600 to 799 | 4 stars |
| 800 to 1,000 | 5 stars |
Better genetics raise food quality, and high care makes that quality more consistent. Keep animals fed and clean to get the best food from them. Raw genetics also unlocks rarer material drops at 3, 4 and 5 stars.
Mounts
Owners can ride their horses, donkeys, mules, camels and llamas. Higher genetics and care give horses, donkeys and mules more health, speed and jump. Camels and llamas are the same however well they are bred. Inspect an animal to see its stats.
Finding your animals
| Command | Aliases | What it does | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
/animals | /livestock | Lists the animals your current character owns or shares, and where each was last seen. | Shows each animal's name and kind, whether it is still growing, and whether it is happy, hungry or dirty, plus how many of your account's 15 places are used. Click the coordinates to copy them. If a place is missing, visit that animal once. |
Right-click an Animal Station to craft a Mount Whistle. Blow it with a right-click and every horse, donkey, mule, llama and trader llama within 64 blocks glows for 5 seconds, so you can spot it through walls. It finds every such animal, not only yours, and chat tells you how many answered. Camels do not answer. Other players can hear the whistle, and it has a 3-second cooldown.