What do cows eat in Minecraft?

Minecraft features several mobs that are peaceful, neutral, and hostile. Cows are a peaceful, passive mob in Minecraft often found roaming around the overworld dimension. These creatures are very common, especially in plains and forest biomes.

Similar to real life, cows in Minecraft have a very specific set of foods they eat. Cows are vegetarians, meaning despite creating some tasty food, they only eat plants. So what exactly do they eat in Minecraft? Here are everything cows eat in the game.

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A cow's diet in Minecraft

Grass

Cow statue in Minecraft (Image via planetminecraft)

A cow’s diet mainly consists of grass. They can eat the grass found on dirt blocks. When cows are kept in stables as pets, it's not uncommon for the cow to eat the grass. This can sometimes make stables look unkept, but it usually only adds to the farm life appeal that certain stable builds have.

Wheat

Flying baby cow (Image via clipground)

Besides grass, cows also eat wheat. Cows can only be fed wheat by the player; they’re not capable of eating it from the ground or picking up dropped wheat items.

When the player has wheat in their hands, cows within a close distance to the player will swarm towards them in an attempt to eat the wheat. The cows will almost beg the player to feed them the wheat.

Players can feed wheat to cows by right-clicking on the cow with wheat in their hands. This food will cause the cows to enter love mode. When two cows are in love mode, it’s possible for them to breed. This creates baby cows, which are both adorable and tiny. With this baby also comes a bit of XP for breeding the animals.

After the cow has bred, they have about a 5-minute cooldown period before they can be fed more wheat to breed again. In each Minecraft world, there’s a certain amount of mobs capable of spawning in a certain area. When this number is reached with cows, the player will no longer be able to feed cows wheat, and the cows will no longer be able to breed with each other.

Other facts worth mentioning

Cows currently do not eat any other food, material, block, or item in Minecraft. However, they do produce milk which players can extract with buckets. All the player has to do is take a bucket in their inventory hand and right-click on the cow to milk it. While the cow won't be able to drink it, the players will.