Make a Cow Farm in Minecraft (2022)

We will first cover the mechanics and requirements to build a cow farm in-game. But if you want to skip ahead to the functionality, you can do so using the table below.

Mechanics of a Minecraft Cow Farm

Unlike other useful Minecraft farms, the cow farm can’t be automated – at least not without the use of Minecraft commands. So, you must put in some effort now and then to keep your automatic cow farm functional. But, at the same time, it also implies that cow farms are the easiest to make. 
To make a cow farm in Minecraft, you simply have to trap some cows and breed them. Once your farm is overpopulated with cows, you can kill them to collect your rewards. Moreover, if you know how to use an Allay in Minecraft, it can take care of the collection process, making the farm semi-automatic right away.

Items Required to Make a Cow Farm

You need the following items to make a cow farm in Minecraft:

Two cowsStacks of wheat (as many as possible)A stack of fences (or less, depending on the area)A fence gate

You can easily find two cows within the plains biome and its variants in Minecraft. You can read about all the Minecraft biomes via the link right here. They are much more common around villages. The same villages can also help you get wheat. Though, you can grow your wheat in Minecraft to get enough of it for your farm.

How to Make a Fence Gate & Fence

The crafting recipe of fences and fence gates only requires sticks and wooden planks. You can use any wood to create them. Moreover, their recipe is, in a way, opposite of each other. And thanks to the abundance of wood in Minecraft, you can quickly build many fences. 

How to Make a Cow Farm in Minecraft

Follow the steps below to quickly and easily build a cow farm and get various resources in Minecraft:

  1. First, find an open area that is at least 4 x 4 blocks. It’s best not to choose a cold biome to avoid snow being collected on your farm.
  2. Then, create a boundary around that area using fences. Then, add a fence door to the boundary for entering the farm and transporting cows.
  3. Next, use wheat to make the cows follow you and have them enter the farm area. You only need two cows to get started but having more of them is only better.
  4. Next, to activate the farm, hold a piece of wheat and stand outside the farm. The cows will move towards you as soon as they notice the wheat.
  5. When the cows approach, you have to feed them wheat to make the cows breed. As soon as both cows are fed, you will see a baby cow spawn. It will take 20 minutes for the baby cow to grow into an adult. And it only takes 5 minutes for cows to be ready to breed again. So, if you time it right, you can get plenty of cows in no time.

Automatically Kill Cows to Collect XP and Items

In cow farms, most Minecraft players usually grab a sword and kill as many cows as they want. It is usually a need-based action. Though, unless you save some of them, you will have to start from scratch. In any case, you can follow these steps below if you wish to improve the killing process:

  1. First, place solid blocks outside the fence boundary. 
  2. Then, place water in one corner of the farm. This will create a flow of water that pushes cows in one corner of the farm.
  3. In the corner where water takes the cows, replace the corner block with a hopper and its surrounding blocks with magma blocks. 
  4. Now, every cow that reaches this corner will die because of damage from magma blocks. Their dropped items will get collected into the chest via the hopper.
    The above mentioned method is the most efficient for killing a bunch of cows at once. Whenever you want to stop, you only have to remove the placed water to stop the flow of cows.
    How to auto-breed the cows? Unfortunately, there is no way to feed, and thus, breed the cows automatically in vanilla Minecraft. But you can use Minecraft mods to get this feature.
    How big should a cow farm be Minecraft? The size of the cow farm depends upon your requirements. You can start small and slowly expand it as the time goes by.
    Can dispensers feed mobs? Dispensers can only throw food as an item. It can’t feed the mobs even if they stand next to it. But it’s a highly demanded feature which we hope is present in Minecraft 1.20 update. How to get seeds to grow wheat in Minecraft? Wheat seeds are the most common ones in the game. You can get them by breaking not only wheat but even regular grass. 

Create Your Own Cow Farm in Minecraft 1.19

With that, you now have everything at your disposal to create a perfect cow farm in Minecraft. It is much simpler to make than other farms in the game. But because of that, it also has a lot of scope for experimentation. Even as a beginner, you can try wild mechanics with the cow farm, and the best Minecraft maps are the perfect place to take inspiration from. But in case you want to level up, you should try building a sculk farm in Minecraft before anything else. It’s not only new but also unique in terms of Minecraft farms. With that said, which other mob farm, according to you, is useful for survival players? Tell us in the comments below!