What do cows eat in Minecraft Java 1.19?

Cows are one of the first few animals to be a part of Minecraft. Originally only dropping leather and no food, they were a sight that elated players wanting to make a cake, one of the best foods in the beta editions of Minecraft.

With the addition of breeding animals and raw beef, cows are more important than ever. Detailed below is how players can take advantage of the breeding system to make cows a renewable resource.

---

What cows eat and why you should feed them in Minecraft Java 1.19

What cows eat

Haybales found in a village (Image via Minecraft)

Cows are one of the game’s many breedable animals, meaning that players will only need to find two cows to have an unlimited amount of cows in a relatively short amount of time. The item that players will need to use to lead and then breed cows is quite easy to get in large quantities, and that is wheat.

---

How to get wheat

An example of a garden where players could grow wheat (Image via Reddit)

As one might expect, the primary way of acquiring wheat is through farming. Players can get wheat seeds by breaking the tall grass that grows on grass blocks in biomes like forests and plains.

Wheat can also be found as random loot in many of the game’s random structures. For example, players can find between one and four wheat in dungeon chests with a likelihood of 34.1%. Igloos also contain wheat in groups of two to three at a higher 55.3% rate. Pillager outposts have the highest chance so far at 72.5% and contain three to five wheat.

Shipwrecks have a smaller chance at only 42.1% but contain a much larger amount of wheat at between 8% and 21%. Alongside the shipwreck, underwater ruins can contain wheat in the small ruins, while big ruins chests contain between two and three wheat at the rate of 84.2% and 81%.

Woodland mansions can contain between one and four wheat at a 34.1% chance. Villages are already some of the most valuable structures available to players and can also contain a lot of wheat. Desert house chests can contain between one and seven wheat at 80.6%, shepherd’s chests can have between one and six wheat at a 55.8% chance, and butchers can have between one and four wheat at 48.6%.

Villages can also contain massive piles of hay blocks, which can be broken down into nine wheat per hay block. This increases the potential for villages to give players wheat.

---

Why cows are useful

A basic level 30 enchantment setup (Image via Minecraft)

Cows are very important for Minecraft players for a few different reasons. The first and most obvious reason why cows are important for survival players is that they drop raw beef. Players can then cook this into steak to stave off the perils of starvation.

Another use for cows is their other, much more important drop: leather. Leather can be used to make books. Books are, in turn, used to make bookshelves, which are mainly used to increase the max level of enchantment available for players to select in enchantment tables.

This makes cows a vital component to increasing a player’s power level, as enchantments contain some of the game’s most powerful abilities, such as fortune, silk touch, protection, and looting.

Books can also be used to make lecterns, which can make librarian villagers. In turn, these librarians offer some of the most powerful enchantments available in the game, such as the mending enchantment, which is otherwise unavailable from the enchanting table.