From battling mobs and crafting armor to exploring new biomes and more, there's a lot of content to explore in Minecraft. One of the more laidback pastimes is starting a farm, as the game lets you breed a variety of animals to bring your idyllic ranch to life. And, oddly enough, the same breeding system that lets you create new animals also works for villagers – giving you a simple way to build a bustling city without much effort.
Breeding villagers works in a slightly different way than animal breeding, but the basic ideas remain the same. Along with finding two villagers, you'll need to get them into close proximity and give them the necessary items and environment to begin the "breeding" process. It's all a bit strange, but it's a rather straightforward process.
Here's how to breed villagers in Minecraft, including required items like food and bedding.
How to breed villagers
Step 1: Find your village of choice. Ideally, it will already have a few villagers around, but that’s not necessary if you are willing to boat or cart in villagers from other locations. Most importantly, it should be monster-free, since empty villages can often contain pillagers, zombies, or other enemies.
Step 2: Make sure you have at least two villagers. Again, you can boat or cart them into the village if you have to.
Step 3: Move your villagers close together. They really need to be in the same building to breed. This isn’t always easy, because villagers don’t always naturally cohabitate. You can simply move two of them close and then build a building around them if you want, or find an existing structure with enough room in it and move your villagers into it.
Step 4: Start making some beds. We have a whole guide on how to do it! The key for breeding villagers is to create enough beds for every villager plus one. Villagers generally won’t breed unless there is an extra bed available for the child. Place the beds, including the extra one, near your villagers.
Step 5: If possible, trade with your villagers to make sure they are active and functioning properly. Now, you’ll need to get them in the mood. Villagers have a specific mating mode they go into, and one of the best ways to encourage it is to give them food — a fair amount of food, too. All told, you'll need to feed them 12 food units, though the game doesn't explictly tell you this.
Instead of trying to track food units, simply feed each villager in your couple one of the following:
3 bread
12 carrots
12 potatoes
12 beetroots
Lob the food into your villagers once you have collected enough. Eventually, hearts will start to appear over the villagers. That means you did everything right and triggered their breeding mode.
Step 6: Wait for the villagers to spawn a baby. You can, uhh, stay and watch if you want — this usually only takes a few minutes at the most once the heart icons start appearing, but you can also go off and explore for a little bit if you want. A child villager will eventually pop into existence next to the two villagers.
Step 7: The child villager will grow up in about half an hour or so … but that’s just one new villager. If you really want to build out your village, you should absolutely create a farm. Pair up a jobless villager with a composter, and they should turn to farming all by themselves. Farmers will automatically supply nearby villagers with their own food, which means you don’t have to keep feeding villagers yourself to get them to breed.
Step 8: Expand your village by continuing to build structures and add extra beds so there’s always at least one spare bed. Before long, you will find your village populating itself. From here, the sky is the limit: You can create a whole city if you want, as long as you keep everything accessible to your villagers.
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