Cows, like all mobs in Minecraft, have a very particular diet. In this guide, we’ll go over all the food types that cows eat, including the specific food that is used to breed them. Now let’s get right to the good part.
What Do Cows Eat in Minecraft?
Mobs in Minecraft tend to like the same foods that their real-world counterparts would eat. You don’t have to be a rancher or farmer to guess what cows eat in Minecraft: grass and wheat.
1. Grass
Cows in Minecraft love snacking on blocks of long grass. Unlike most mobs, cows in Minecraft will feed on their own. As long as there’s grass somewhere in their vicinity, your cow will chow down whenever it’s feeling a bit peckish.
While it’s pretty handy that you don’t have to hand-feed grass to your cows to keep them alive, eating grass doesn’t instigate breeding. So, if you’re planning on launching a cow ranch, you’ll need a healthy supply of their favorite snack: wheat.
2. Wheat
Simple wheat is your bull or heifer’s dish of choice. In fact, they enjoy wheat so much that it puts them in the mood for lovemaking.
Walk up to a cow and hand it some wheat, then watch as hearts spout forth from it; an expression of its loyalty and adoration for you.
Put two (or more) cows together and feed them a bit of wheat to make them do the deed. In moments, you’ll have a brand-new calf that will soon grow into a fully-fledged adult cow.
Sourcing Wheat
Here are the ways you can get wheat in Minecraft:
1. Plant Wheat Seeds
Although wheat isn’t as readily available as grass, which is literally everywhere, it’s no rare commodity. In fact, wheat is one of the easiest kinds of food to farm in Minecraft.
Just plant a wheat seed in a plot of tilled soil. All it needs is water, sunshine, and a bit of time before it matures and can be harvested.
One harvest yields one wheat and up to three wheat seeds, which means you can kickstart a full agriculture production center from a single wheat plant.
2. Get It From a Fox
Foxes occasionally spawn with wheat in their inventory. If you kill it, it will drop the wheat. If you’re not the type to kill an innocent animal in cold blood, you can also trade a food item for the wheat. Just throw the food onto the ground in front of the fox and it will drop the wheat.
This is probably the least reliable method for getting wheat, just because it requires finding a fox (which is fairly rare) and then praying that it’s holding wheat.
3. Steal It From Villagers
Villages typically have at least one farm with wheat plants, making them a good place to raid some wheat.
And that’s it for our guide to what cows eat in Minecraft. As we’ve learned, these low-maintenance mobs aren’t just a great source of meat, they’re also self-sustaining!
When they’re hungry, they’ll eat any grass around them, which makes them easy to care for. And when it comes time to breed them, all you need is a bit of wheat.
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