Minecraft Sheep Guide

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Arthur Monteclar

Arthur is a freelance writer. The first time he played Minecraft was an unforgettable experience. Since then, he has been learning the rules of the game. He pours hours structuring his ideal world in the game. In his spare time, he reads manga and watches anime.

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Minecraft is a survival game, but it can also be a game where you can showcase your creativity. Many people have spent a lot of time creating astonishing artworks, sculptures, and structures in Minecraft. Of course, you would probably need some colorful varieties to add in some extra flavor of artistry and expressiveness.

Thankfully, this game can offer what you are looking for, and that is through the colored wool of sheep. Before the developers introduced other colorful blocks, gamers would rely on sheep’s wool to make their builds grandeur. Even now, they are still relevant, and it is all thanks to the sheep. Yet these valuable animals are not only utilized for colorful buildings.

You can use their wool to craft many things, including a bed, one of the essential items to avoid a dangerous night. Their meat is an excellent way to fill your empty stomach. They are simply a must-have on your farm. If you want to learn more about the sheep in Minecraft, read on further as I explain everything you need to know about them.

What are sheep in Minecraft?

Sheep are passive mobs in Minecraft that existed even before the game’s first official version launched. They grow wool which you can harvest for decorative purposes or as crafting materials. They also drop mutton, their flesh in culinary terms, which you can cook and consume. You can harvest their wool by killing them, though you can also use shears to collect it without the need for their death.

They drop one to three experience orbs when you or a tamed wolf kills one. Meanwhile, they drop one to seven experience orbs when you breed two sheep to make a baby. They do not drop experience orbs if they die independently, e.g., falling off a cliff, dying in lava, and more. Note that killing a baby sheep does not drop experience orbs as well.

Their wool can come in 16 different colors. When you dye a sheep to a particular color, the wool they produce will have the same color until they are dyed with another color. For example, a white sheep dyed with blue will continue producing blue wool until you dye the sheep with another color. Many players keep farms of sheep of varying shades alongside their base.

What does a Minecraft sheep look like?

Sheep in Minecraft have rectangular bodies and a square head, and they stand on four rectangular legs. Their legs are primarily bare of wool, and they have brown skin and dark brown hooves. Thick wool covers their body and most of their head. When the wool is sheared, their body will have patches of wool left behind on their bare, visible skin. Furthermore, their head will have a skinny layer of wool.

Their wool’s color may vary from white, black, gray, light gray, brown, and pink in the wild. You can find them either as adults or as babies. However, most of the time, the game will spawn adult sheep. They have rectangular cross-eyed eyes with dark pupils going outwards. Their mouth is pink and open.

You can dye their wool to any color you like if you have the appropriate item or dye. Some dyes differ between Java and Bedrock Edition. For example, you would need blue dye to dye a sheep blue on Java Edition, but you would need lapis lazuli for the same color in Bedrock Edition. Their wool will be permanently colored to what you dyed it unless it is dyed again with another color.

Minecraft sheep “jeb_”

Sheep can have a weird color for their wool under the right circumstances. If you name a sheep “jeb_” without the double apostrophes, the sheep’s wool will start to cycle through the different colors. However, the effect is only cosmetic, and the resulting wool you get from shearing or killing them would be the color the sheep’s wool had before you renamed it.

What are the Minecraft sheep’s uses?

You can keep sheep on farms and harvest their most valuable assets: their wool. However, you can also use them as a reliable food source to breed them to create more sheep. The meat they produce is called mutton, and they drop it raw when killed. They will also drop wool and experience orbs when killed, but the experience orbs only drop if the player or the player’s wolf killed them.

How to collect wool from Minecraft sheep

You can collect wool from sheep by shearing them using shears. Equip the tool on your hand and use the “use” key (right-click on the mouse on PC or the left trigger on most controllers by default) on the sheep. You can get one to three pieces of wool of their corresponding color when you shear them, and they do not take damage. They will also drop one wool when they die. Killing baby sheep will not give you wool.

The wool will automatically regrow once the sheep eats from a grass block. It is easy to make them if you do not have shears yet; all you need is two iron ingots. You can follow this quick guide I made about making shears. It covers everything, even if you do are starting from the beginning. You can skip some of the steps if you are done making certain items.

How to collect mutton from Minecraft sheep

The only way to get mutton is to kill them. They would drop one to two muttons regardless of whether you or your wolf directly or indirectly caused the death. They will drop raw mutton by default, but they will drop cooked mutton instead if they die while they are on fire. Killing baby sheep will not give you any mutton.

You can increase the maximum amount of mutton you can get by killing them using a weapon with the Looting enchantment. You can get one more mutton for every level of Looting. For example, you can get one to five muttons from killing a sheep using a sword with a level 3 Looting enchantment.

How to collect experience orbs from Minecraft sheep

You can get experience orbs from sheep in two ways: killing or breeding them. The sheep will drop one to three experience orbs when you kill them. You can also get them if you have a tamed wolf who killed the sheep. Meanwhile, you can get one to seven experience orbs when you breed two sheep to make a baby. Killing baby sheep will not give you experience orbs.

Where to find sheep in Minecraft

Sheep spawn naturally during world generation, either in two to three or individually. They will appear on grass blocks in any biome except for:

• Deserts
• Snowy Plains
• Snowy Slopes
• Ice Spikes
• Wooded Badlands
• Jagged Peaks
• Frozen Peaks
• Stony Peaks

If you are in any of these biomes listed above and looking for sheep, you should go to another biome. However, it can be difficult to play in a “large biomes” world. It can take days or weeks to visit another biome, and traveling at night is especially dangerous.

In this case, Viable transportation options would be either nether portals or flying with elytra. Nether portals can get you to places quickly because distances work in sync with the overworld. Traveling over one block in the Nether equates to eight blocks in the overworld. Meanwhile, flying can help you avoid enemies at night. Here is a guide on how to fly in Minecraft.

Sheep in villages

Sheep can also spawn in specific structures within villages. They can spawn in pairs in butcher houses, shepherd houses, and animal pens. Each of these structures differs in style depending on the biome. For example, shepherd houses in plains are mostly made of wood and are long in width. They have a porch roof with two pieces of wool; the wool closest to the door is yellow while the other is white.

However, the shepherd houses in savannas are simply huts made from acacia logs with a roof made from acacia stairs. On the other side of the house’s entrance is a large fenced area where the sheep reside. Thus, because of the vastly different styles of these structures, it is hard to cover all of their appearances in a single guide.

Villages are the only places where sheep can spawn in the desert or snowy biomes. This information can prove helpful, especially if you are in a large biome. You can look for villages and wish sheep have spawned in their structures.

Chances of sheep spawning

Most of the time, the game spawns the sheep as adults. There is only an incredibly slim chance that they will spawn as babies. Furthermore, their colors are also randomized. Most of the time, the game generates sheep with white wool by 77.7%, black, gray, and light gray wool by 4.75%, brown wool by 2.85%, and pink wool by 0.16%.

Below is a table illustrating the chances for each kind of sheep spawning. Based on the data below, the rarest sheep the game can spawn is the baby pink sheep, while the most common is the adult white sheep.

What can Minecraft sheep do?

Sheep are passive mobs, which means they do not attack or damage you even if you hurt them. When you attack them, they would make a bleating sound and then run away for a few seconds. Wild wolves tend to hunt and kill them, yet they are not vigilant in looking out for wolves. They would wander around and avoid hazardous cliffs that could damage them.

They make bleating sounds in random intervals, so living close to them would not be an ideal situation if you are easily annoyed by noise. They would sometimes eat grass from grass blocks underneath them, and these blocks would turn to dirt right after. Sheared sheep would regrow their wool when they eat grass blocks. Sheared sheep will never regrow their wool if they cannot eat grass.

They will follow you if you are holding out wheat on your hand. However, you must be six blocks near them. They will lose interest and stop following you if you are too fast and leave their six-block radius. You can use a leash instead if you want to move faster as you can use leashes on them.

How to dye Minecraft sheep

Equip the dye of your choice on your hand and simply press the “use” button on the sheep. It will automatically color the sheep’s wool with the corresponding dye. Overall, you can dye your sheep in 16 colors, proportional to the available number of dye colors there are in the game. The sheep’s wool color will permanently be the color you dyed it with unless it is replaced with a new dye.

If you want a particular color for your sheep, I have listed below the dyes you would need for that specific color. Note that three colors (white, black, and blue) do not have a corresponding dye in Bedrock Edition. Instead, there is an item for them. The “crafting ingredient” is for the dyes, not for the things replacing them in Bedrock Edition.

Also, you can craft two dyes by smelting, and you cannot craft one of them. The “[Smelting]” tag will indicate if you will craft the dye by smelting the ingredient. Furthermore, the number of resulting dyes will always correlate with the number of materials you put in. For example, you will receive three light gray dyes if you craft them by combining one black dye and two white dyes.

Minecraft sheep “wololo”

Another neat easter egg that the developers added in is the “wololo” effect. If an evoker is not engaged in combat and the [mobGriefing] option is turned on, the evoker will change the wool color of a blue sheep within 16 blocks of it to red. They will also make a “wololo” sound effect when they convert colors.

This incident references the 1997 game known as “Age of Empires,” wherein blue priest units can convert red units to blue. Of course, it is a rare incident, and it does not necessarily replace the method of dyeing a blue sheep red using red dye. It is an easter egg that the developers implemented, and they knew the fans would love it.

How to breed Minecraft sheep

Equip two ears of wheat on your hand and feed each to two sheep. The sheep that you gave wheat to will go closer to each other. An indication that you have fed sheep wheat is that hearts will constantly float from the sheep’s body and into the air. Once the two sheep find each other, a baby sheep will pop out after a few seconds.

The baby sheep will grow in approximately 20 minutes, but you can accelerate its growth by giving it wheat. Every time you feed a baby sheep, their growth takes 10% off the remaining time. Baby sheep also accelerate their development when they eat grass from grass blocks.

The baby sheep’s wool color will be determined by its parents. Sometimes, two differently colored sheep can create a baby whose wool color is a mix of both. For example, a sheep with red wool and a sheep with white wool will create pink baby sheep when the two are bred together. However, the wool colors need to be compatible.

The new color’s dye is the way to tell if two sheep with different colors can make babies with a different color from their parents. If you can combine two dyes to make the corresponding dye, then they are compatible. Like the previous example, red and white sheep can make pink babies because red and white dye create pink dye when crafted.

How to kill Minecraft sheep

The sheep in Minecraft are very easy to kill as they only have eight health points (four hearts). I have listed how many strikes you would need to kill a sheep for every weapon. This data is only applicable for Java Edition, as Bedrock Edition has different combat mechanics. Also, no enchantments are in effect, so the damage is the raw damage the unenchanted weapon can deal with.

Based on the data presented, most axes can kill a sheep in one strike. However, it is essential to note that axes have long cooldowns to compensate for their incredible power. Axes are ideal for killing weak animals like sheep, but you should use swords when fighting against enemies with long health as swords deal more significant damage per second.

Minecraft achievements related to sheep

Bedrock Edition has one single achievement related to sheep, and that is the “Rainbow Collection” achievement. Its details are listed below.

• Rainbow Collection: “Gather all 16 colors of wool.”

You do not need to have every color in one storage to get this achievement. Instead, you simply must have picked up every color of wool at least once. Sheep are not directly related to this achievement as wool can be crafted using spider webs, but having sheep to collect wool is an easy and standard method.

Minecraft advancements related to sheep

Two Minecraft advancements are related to sheep; one requires them while one has them as an option. Their details are listed down below.

• The Parrots and the Bats: “Breed two animals together.”
• Two by Two: “Breed all the animals.”

You can get “the Parrots and the Bats” advancement by breeding other animals instead, but again the sheep are viable creatures for breeding. The “Two by Two” advancement requires sheep as you need to breed all the animals capable of breeding.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion: Should you farm sheep in Minecraft?

Sheep are one of the most valuable mobs in Minecraft because of their wool. Wools are simply decorative blocks on the surface due to their varying colors. However, they have important uses as well in crafting. For example, making a bed requires three pieces of wool. I would get a bed as early as possible to skip the night in my gameplay, and getting a bed is not possible without sheep.

They are also reliable food sources when no other food source is available. I would prefer cows over sheep as food, but sometimes there are no cows available while there is plenty of sheep. When this situation happens, you would have no choice but to pick sheep. Their mutton, when cooked, will replenish your hunger by six hunger points.

Overall, I would recommend farming sheep whenever possible because you can use their wool in many situations. At first, their use can be negligible, but perhaps you will soon realize that you need large amounts of wool in the future. Thus, it is better to prepare yourself than regret not doing so.

I would highly recommend farming sheep if you have no other animal options like a food source or planning on doing a large-scale project dealing with different colors.

Further Read:

• How to Teleport in Minecraft: The Game Changing Trick
• How to Tame a Fox in Minecraft: All You Need To Know!
• 5 Best Fishing Rod Enchantments in Minecraft That You Should Try [2022]