How to Tame a Turtle in Minecraft

By Binh TranMay 17, 2022Updated:May 30, 2022

Turtle is a passive mob in Minecraft that was added to the game in the 1.13 aquatic update along with the trident and many other features. Want to learn how to tame a turtle in Minecraft? Read on.

Unlike most other passive mobs in Minecraft, you can’t actually tame a turtle. But there is a way to lure them to your home and even raise them. You can even breed them later if you want! So let’s find out!

What You Need to Tame a Turtle in Minecraft

1x Seagrass

How to Tame a Turtle in Minecraft

Step 1: Collect 1x Seagrass

Seagrass is another variant of grass in Minecraft but grows underwater. They have a green color and even have a two-block tall variant just like tallgrass on the ground.

You can find them pretty much anywhere on the ocean floor. The exclusive list of biomes that seagrass can spawn in is Ocean, Deep Ocean, Cold Ocean, Deep Cold Ocean, Lukewarm Ocean, Deep Lukewarm Ocean, and Warm Ocean.

Unlike leaves, you can only use shears to harvest seagrass. Breaking it with any tools or barehand will drop nothing.

Each seagrass yield 1x seagrass item and you gain double for the tall seagrass.

You can also farm seagrass easily by using bone meal on blocks underwater. And not all blocks can spawn seagrass, only dirt, coarse dirt, sand, red sand, gravel, and clay are eligible.

Alternatively, you can kill any turtles for seagrass. Each turtle drop 0-2x seagrass on death and this amount can be increased to 5x seagrass with a looting III enchantment.

Step 2: Find Turtle in Minecraft

Turtles only spawn on the sand block and have a featured green on their cell so it’s kinda hard to miss them when you’re wandering around.

In addition, turtles usually spawn in a group of five so it provides a higher chance to easily see them among the sand!

However, you can’t just place a sand block in your house and hope the turtle will spawn. Since turtles only spawn in the beach biome. So unless you’re living on the beach, it’s quite difficult to get one.

Turtles also need a high light level to be able to spawn and the Y-axis of the sand block needs to be higher than 62.

Step 3: Tame a Turtle

When you have found a turtle, just walk straight to it because the turtle is super slow on land. But be careful when they’re on water since their speed will significantly increase.

You can feed the turtle with seagrass by right-clicking on it. This action is similar to feeding other passive mobs and you cannot tame a turtle. You also can’t use a leash on turtles to lead them home.

Instead, you can hold a seagrass in your hand and lead them to your base. Or you can carry the turtle using a boat in Minecraft.

When you’re done bringing the turtles home, they will try to return to their home beach to lay eggs. And baby turtles after hatching will remember this location as the home beach as well!

To avoid this and make sure the baby turtles in the future don’t do the same, just feed two turtles with the seagrass and they will enter the love mode. After a while, one turtle will lay eggs. Now you must use a Silk Touch tool to harvest the eggs and bring them home with you.

When you place the eggs at the new location (your base), the baby turtles will remember this as their home beach and will return to your base to lay more eggs if possible.

Remember that turtle eggs can be damaged by you and other mobs. So make sure to not stand on them and keep them away from those mobs including zombies, zombie villagers, husks, drowned, zombified piglins, blaze, withers, and ravagers.