How to breed villagers in Minecraft

Josh Tyler
Minecraft Villager

In Minecraft, villagers can provide valuable enchanted items via trades, serve as a source of emeralds, and enable the creation of Iron Golem farms for limitless reserves in your base. If you’re seeking easy methods to breed villages in Minecraft, look no further; we’ve got you covered.

Trading is the ultimate method to obtain coveted items like golden apples, fully enchanted tools and armor, or rare arrows in the game.

Finding a villager of the appropriate type and getting them to trade until you get the required levels to get those high-value items can be a massive investment of time and emeralds. There’s also a risk of the villager being killed when you’re away which means you’ll have to start the process all over again.

A solution to this is to move your villagers to a secure location and breed them, and here’s exactly how you can do this in the sandbox game.

How do villagers breed in Minecraft?

Minecraft Village
Villagers can be bred under certain conditions.

The actual mechanics of the breeding of Minecraft villagers are quite simple. If two adult villagers are willing to breed and there is space for the baby villager they will create, they will indeed breed.

There are no limits on the type of villagers that can breed, as they have no gender, so long as they are adults. However, both must be able to physically reach each other.

When villagers are ready and there is enough space for their offspring, the two will enter “love mode” to produce the baby. Just like Minecraft animals, the two characters in love will stare at each other for a few seconds and then spawn a baby villager between them.

The baby villager will eventually grow into an adult villager who can also breed and be given an occupation for trade.

Unlike breeding animals, however, breeding villagers does not grant experience.

When will villagers breed in Minecraft?

Minecraft Villagers Love
For villagers to breed, they need to be in love first.

However, villagers cannot breed constantly. There is a cooldown after two villagers breed that must elapse before they can do it again.

Also, villagers will not breed without the player’s intervention and these two conditions need to be met: willingness and capacity.

Willingness

The willingness requirement is met when the villager has 12 food points, as this is the energy required to breed.

Players can satisfy this by throwing either three bread (4 food points each) or twelve carrots, potatoes, or beetroots (1 food point each) at the villager’s feet. The villagers will pick up the food near their feet and eat it.

Another way to increase the willingness of a villager is to engage in trade with them. Villagers have lots of different materials to trade. The chances of a villager’s willingness to rise are high when you complete a new trade with them.

Capacity

The capacity needs refers to the number of available beds nearby for the villagers and their offspring. Even if villagers are breeding, they will not produce offspring if there is not enough capacity.

All baby and adult villagers require a bed with at least two empty blocks above them, so villagers can breed for as many beds with such space as is allowed.

However, if the bed is too far away (outside a 48-block radius) or inaccessible via the villager’s pathfinding logic, breeding will not occur regardless of willingness. Once the baby villager is born, it will claim one of the available beds, reducing the population capacity unless more are added.

For more Minecraft tips and tricks, be sure to check out our other guides:

All Minecraft Dyes | Best Minecraft house ideas | Minecraft Axolotl: How to tame, breed, & feed | All Armor Trims & recipes in Minecraft | Minecraft Sniffer: How to breed & where to find it | What are Torchflowers in Minecraft? | Minecraft: How to make a Brush | All Minecraft biomes & upcoming regions | How to make paper & books in Minecraft | How to craft Minecraft Smithing Table | How to make a beehive in Minecraft | What is a Vex in Minecraft? | How to breed Camels in Minecraft & can you tame them?

About The Author

Josh Tyler is Dexerto's US Editor, focused on TV and movies as well as all things gaming. Formerly of Fansided and Screen Rant. Tips welcome at josh.tyler@dexerto.com