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PASSIVE Present since 1.14 or earlier

Cow mob in Minecraft

The Cow is the farm animal you keep for leather, beef and milk. Two cows and a stack of wheat are enough to start a herd, and an empty bucket gives you milk as often as you like without hurting the animal.

Health: 105 hearts
Behavior: Passive
Food: Wheat
Found in: 25 biomes

Cow stats

Health: 10 5 hearts
Behavior: Passive
Main drop: Leather
Spawns in: 25 biomes
Size: 0.9 × 1.4 blocks
XP when killed: 1 to 3none as a baby
Speed: 0.2
Detection range: 16 blocks
Tempt range: 10 blocks

// Experience drops only when a player kills it. Speeds are the game’s internal values, not blocks per second.

Where to find Cow

Biomes where it spawns naturally, with its share of the spawns in each group.

Old Growth Birch Forest

Old Growth Pine Taiga

Old Growth Spruce Taiga

All 25 biomes

Windswept Gravelly Hills

Windswept Hills

Windswept Savanna

Wooded Badlands

Spawning

Group size: 4
Light level: 9 or more
Spawns on: Grass Block

Structures

With the structureVillage

Cow drops

Cow dropsFrom the loot table · chance per kill

Leather+1 per Looting level0–2

Raw Beef+1 per Looting level · Cooked if it dies on fire1–3

Health compared

Health vs other passive mobshealth points

Armadillo12

Copper Golem12

Cat10

Cow10

Fox10

Frog10

Glow Squid10

Variants

3 variants. The game picks one when the mob spawns, based on where it appears.

Cold Spawns in cold biomes

Temperate

Warm Spawns in warm biomes

Cow and its family

Mobs built on the same base in the game code, compared on their game values.

Mob	Health	XP	Speed
Cow	10	1–3	0.2
Mooshroom	10	1–3	0.2

Food and breeding

Items it eats, follows or breeds with.

Wheat

What you can do with Cow

Items to use on it and what happens.

MilkBucketUse a Bucket on it to fill a Milk Bucket.

Baby Cow

Bred with

Wheat All baby mobs →

Gear and tools

Items it can wear, and items you use on it.

Use on itBucket

Advancements with Cow

Advancements whose criteria involve this mob, from the game files.

Two by TwoBreed all the animals!

Command

Summon a Cow/summon →

/summon minecraft:cow ~ ~ ~

How to breed cows

Hold wheat and every cow nearby turns to follow you, which is the easiest way to walk a pair home. Feed wheat to two adults standing close together: hearts appear and a calf spawns between them. Each parent then needs about five minutes before it can breed again.

A calf takes about twenty minutes to grow up. Every piece of wheat you feed it shortens the wait, so a few extra stacks turn a small herd into a large one quickly.

Building a pen that works

Cows cannot jump over an oak fence or any other fence, and a fence gate lets you walk in without the herd walking out. Keep the pen small enough that the animals stay packed together: breeding and culling go much faster when you can reach every cow from one spot. Light the inside so no hostile mob spawns among them at night.

Milk, leather and beef

Use an empty bucket on an adult cow to fill a milk bucket. Drinking it removes every effect you have, good or bad, which makes one bucket worth carrying against Poison or Wither. Milk is also one of the ingredients of cake, which takes three buckets.

A cow you kill drops leather and raw beef. Leather goes into books, item frames, bundles, saddles and leather armor, so most players need more of it than they expect. A sword with Looting raises both drops, and one with Fire Aspect gives you cooked steak straight away.

Cold, temperate and warm cows

A cow takes one of three looks when it spawns, based on the biome. Cold biomes such as taigas, snowy taigas and windswept hills give the cold variant; savannas, jungles and badlands give the warm one; other biomes give the classic temperate cow. The look is purely cosmetic: all three give the same milk, leather and beef.

The red or brown cows of the mushroom fields are a different mob, the Mooshroom, which also gives mushroom stew.

✓ Checked in Java Edition 26.3 · updated 1 November 2026