How to feed animals in Minecraft

Minecraft's roster of animal mobs has been growing more and more with each in-game update, with the camel and the sniffer joining the game in the 1.20 Trails & Tales update. Many of these in-game critters are very interaction-friendly as well and can be tamed, healed, or bred with other members of their species. Typically, this is accomplished by feeding an animal mob some of its favorite snacks.

Feeding an animal mob in Minecraft is an incredibly easy process, and there are plenty of benefits. However, to feed an animal mob, you need to know what the critter in question eats.

Minecraft's animal mobs can be picky on occasion, and the food they prefer to eat depends on their species. Nonetheless, once you know what to feed an animal, doing so can be accomplished with just the press of a button.

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What does each animal mob eat in Minecraft?

Regardless of whether you are healing, breeding, or taming an animal mob,you're likely doing so with a tasty snack. Many animals prefer specific favored foods, though some creatures share similarities between them. Regardless, the food that animals adore in this sandbox game usually isn't too difficult to obtain.

Each animal mob's favored foods in Minecraft:

• Horses and donkeys - Sugar, apples, wheat, hay bales, golden apples, enchanted golden apples, and golden carrots
• Cows, goats, mooshrooms, sheep - Wheat
• Pigs - Carrots, potatoes, beetroots, carrots on a stick
• Chickens - Seeds for wheat, pumpkins, melons, beetroots, and torchflowers as well as pitcher pods
• Wolves - Bones, raw and cooked meat, raw and cooked fish, rabbit stew, rotten flesh
• Cats and ocelots - Raw cod or salmon
• Axolotls - Buckets of tropical fish
• Llamas and trader llamas - Wheat and hay bales
• Rabbits - Dandelions, carrots, or golden carrots
• Turtles - Seagrass
• Pandas - Bamboo and cake
• Foxes - Glow berries and sweet berries
• Bees - Flowers
• Striders - Warped fungus
• Hoglins - Crimson fungus
• Frogs - Slimeballs
• Camels - Cactus
• Sniffers - Torchflower seeds

While some foods are specifically used to heal or tame Minecraft's animal mobs, others are utilized for breeding purposes. This is on a mob-by-mob basis, but nonetheless, animals favor the foods above for one reason or another.

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How to feed an animal in Minecraft

Once you have the food you need to feed an animal, the process of doing so is incredibly straightforward. It works much like how you would eat the food item yourself, just with a little more specificity when targeting. Furthermore, some food sources, like hay bales, operate a little differently.

Feeding animals in Minecraft:

1. Place the food item of choice into your character's hands either directly via the inventory screen or by placing and highlighting the food in your hotbar.
2. Approach the animal mob in question with the food item in your hand and either right-click on PC or press the "use item" button on your controller. If you're close enough to the animal mob, it should take the food from you and emit a few heart particles as a result.
3. In the case of animal mobs that eat hay bales, simply place the hay bale block near the mob, and it will feed from it whenever it desires, though it usually chooses to do so as soon as it can. The lone exception is when the creature is on a cooldown pertaining to breeding.

Although certain foods perform certain functions to varying degrees of effectiveness, animal mobs aren't keen on turning down a tasty treat. If they can get one from a nearby player, they're usually quite happy to do so (though Hoglins remain hostile while being fed, which is something worth being cautious about).