How to safely mine turtle eggs in Minecraft

Much like the real world, Minecraft's turtle eggs are incredibly fragile and can easily be destroyed by tools or by hand.

Because of how prone eggs are to being destroyed, players may be wondering how to pick them up for storage or transportation to a safer location.

Since most standard tools and machinery such as pistons simply break the eggs, players will require the Silk Touch enchantment to harvest them. This enchantment has been used for years to snag blocks that would otherwise be unattainable.

---

Minecraft: Obtaining the Silk Touch enchantment

Turtles can be a rare occurrence in Minecraft, making their eggs and offspring important. (Image via Mojang)

In Minecraft, players can use a tool enchanted with Silk Touch to collect the mined block itself, without its byproduct. For example, if a Silk Touch pick axe is used on a diamond ore block, the latter will drop the diamond ore block instead of diamonds.

While this may not seem significant at first, Silk Touch is a way for players to collect delicate or otherwise difficult to acquire elements like ice blocks, Ender Chests, leaves, podzol, and more.

This enchantment can be applied to most standard tools, including pickaxes, axes, shovels, and hoes. Shears can also be enchanted with Silk Touch in Minecraft: Bedrock Edition.

To obtain it, players can loot an enchanted book containing the enchantment and apply it to a tool via an anvil. However, they can also use an enchanting table for the process. At an enchanting table, players can use their XP along with Lapis Lazuli to enchant tools.

Since Silk Touch only has one rank, it doesn't cost much compared to higher-rank enchantments such as Fortune or Unbreaking. If players can't find Silk Touch in their enchanting menu, imbuing another item with a low-rank enchantment should refresh the list.

Once Minecraft players have acquired the Silk Touch enchantment on one of their tools, all they need to do is find the turtle eggs and break them with the tool.

This should drop the turtle eggs in block form instead of outright destroying them. Players can now store the eggs or move them to a safer location. Keep in mind, however, that removing eggs with Silk Touch also resets their hatching timer. This means it will take a considerable amount of time to hatch the newborn turtles.

---