How to Breed Cows in Minecraft: Easily Explained!

Everything you need to know about breeding and raising cows in Minecraft

Written by Travis Boylls

Last Updated: February 22, 2025 Fact Checked

In Minecraft, cows are a passive mob. When slaughtered, they dropped raw steaks and leather. You can also milk them. To keep a steady supply of steaks and leather, you must continuously breed cows. This wikiHow article teaches you how to breed cows in Minecraft.

Things You Should Know

Feed cows wheat to put them in Love mode. Two cows in Love mode near each other will breed and produce a calf.
Cows spawn on grass blocks in daylight. Locate 2 cows that you want to breed.
Calves take approximately 20 minutes to mature into adult cows.

Steps

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1
Gather wheat. You grow wheat by planting grass seeds in tilled soil next to a water source. You can find grass seeds by breaking tall grass. Once wheat has been planted and matured, you can harvest it by breaking it.
- Alternatively, you can find wheat planted by villagers in villages.
- The time it takes wheat to grow and fully mature depends on the conditions it is grown. Wheat grows best in well-lit areas. Under ideal conditions, it takes wheat about 31 minutes to fully mature. ^{[1]
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2
Locate 2 or more cows. Cows spawn on grass blocks in well-lit areas. They spawn in herds of 2 or 3. Cows are pretty abundant in Minecraft. It shouldn't take long to find a couple.
- Once you find a couple of cows, you may want to build a fence around them to keep them from wandering off.
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To equip the wheat, open your inventory and drag the wheat into one of the hot bar spaces. Select the corresponding hot bar space at the bottom of the screen to hold the wheat. Cows will follow players holding wheat.
Stand next to the cows and aim your reticle at them. Right-click or squeeze the left trigger button to feed wheat to the cows. Keep feeding them until you see hearts over their head. This indicates that the cows are in Love mode.
Two cows near each other in Love mode will breed and immediately produce a calf.
It takes calves about 30 minutes to fully mature into an adult cow. You can speed up this process by feeding the calf wheat.^{[2]
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Tips

You can breed other animals in Minecraft much the same way you breed cows. However, some animals must be tamed before they can be bred.

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Do you want a steady supply of meat and leather? Try building an animal farm.

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When slaughtering cows for meat and leather, be sure to leave at least 2 alive so that you can continue to breed them.

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