How to Breed Villagers in Minecraft: A Step-by-Step Guide

Villagers are one of the most valuable mobs in Minecraft. Trading with them can get you almost every block and item that you need in your playthrough. And, nearly every late-game Minecraft gameplay depends on having a steady villager population. So, let’s not wait around and learn how to breed villagers in Minecraft with ease.

Quick Checklist: Requirements for Villager Breeding

Unlike breeding other Minecraft mobs, the process of breeding villagers in Minecraft is a little complex. Let’s go over the various factors that affect it separately. You need to ensure all of the requirements below are met to breed villagers in the game.

• At Least Two Villagers
• Breeding Area
• Food Items
• Willingness

The most basic requirement for breeding is at least two villagers. We have explained how willingness is important for villagers to breed and produce a baby villager in the section below.

The “Three Bed” Rule Explained

The next requirement to breed villagers is a proper space. You need to place a bed for each villager while leaving two empty blocks above each bed. So, if you have two villagers and want to get the third one, you’ll need a total of three beds, and so on.

The empty space above the bed allows the baby villagers to jump, and thus, improves the circumstances of their spawning.

Beyond that, make sure the area where you keep your villagers is large enough. A good practice is to have 3 block areas for each villager. So, if you want to breed 10 villagers, make sure you have an empty area of 30 blocks.

Food Requirements: What to feed your Villagers

Unlike animals, you can’t feed food to villagers to make them breed. But having enough food supplies does make them willing to breed. So, you need to collect and throw food in front of each villager.

The villager will then pick up the food items until they have at least 3 bread, 12 carrots, 12 potatoes, or 12 beetroots. Each food type has a certain point system, and a villager needs to have 12 points before they can breed. So, check the table below to know about the points for each food:

Food	Points
Bread	4
Carrot	1
Potato	1
Beetroot	1

Check our tutorial on how to get carrots and how to plant seeds in Minecraft for an easy inflow of food. Furthermore, you should know that if a villager has excess food, they will throw it for others to pick up. So, you don’t have to worry about providing food to individual villagers.

Compared to real life, the villagers in Minecraft don’t have defined gender roles. But they do follow the concept of consent. So, once you have provided food and shelter, the rest of the process remains with the villagers. Willingness is usually dependent on the amount of food a villager has. So, you must keep providing food if you want your villagers to keep breeding.

How to Breed Villagers in Minecraft

Once you have fulfilled all the above requirements, the actual process is easy, and you can follow the steps below to breed villagers in your world. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Transporting Villagers (Boats & Minecarts)

Villagers won’t follow you naturally, and this is why transporting them is the first step. Well, this is how you can bring the villagers to the place of breeding them:

• To begin, you need to lure two villagers to a certain enclosed location. And yes, you have to do it by force.
• You can either push the villagers to the location or build a structural path to lead them.
• But the simplest way is to place a boat in front of the villagers and wait for them to sit in it. Then, you can row the boat to a specific area.

Step 2: Setting up the Beds and Privacy

Now the next step is setting up a room for the villagers and obviously leaving them alone. This is how you are going to do it:

• Now, trap the two villagers close to each other by creating a structure of some kind.
• The best place to make villagers breed is either their house or a dedicated breeding area.
• Finally, you need to place 3 beds around the villagers.

Step 3: Increasing “Willingness”

Now that the room is available for the villagers, all you need to do is give them some food and some time. These are some tips to increase the willingness for villager breeding:

• Give them their desired food. Doing so will increase their willingness to breed, and within minutes, you will meet the baby villagers.
• Also, keep in mind that villagers will only breed when it’s their meeting time before and after work hours.
• So, if you feed them during work hours, you’ll need to wait a bit for them to breed.

Why Aren’t My Villagers Breeding? (Common Fixes)

If your villagers are not displaying the heart particles, no matter how much food you give them, there might be some underlying problems that are not letting them breed. So, here are some of the most common reasons why villager breeding is failing in your world and their fixes as well:

• Villager breeding is strictly controlled by the number of available beds. So, the total number of beds will be the maximum population inside the breeding room.
• So, if there are 3 beds and 3 villagers, the breeding will stop.
• A quick fix to this is that you either need to place extra beds or move the extra villagers out of the 32-block area from the breeding room.

Another critical reason for villagers not breeding is the mobGriefing gamerule. Make sure to turn on commands in your Minecraft world and run the following:

/gamerule mobGriefing true

If this were set to false, villagers cannot pick up food and therefore won’t breed in the game. Another important tip here is that after the villager and pillage Minecraft update, you don’t need to add doors to the villager breeding room.

Advanced Tips: Creating an Infinite Villager Farm

While a villager breeding room works well with two villagers, you have to constantly put manual effort into moving one of them out or providing an extra bed. Instead of doing this, you can create an infinite villager breeder farm that manages population automatically.

The concept and design of an infinite villager farm is to keep two adult villagers close to each other with extra beds in proximity. As soon as a baby villager spawns and claims a bed, it is transported 32 blocks away from the farm. The bed becomes unclaimed, and the villagers become ready to breed again.

Here is a fantastic infinite villager farm design by silentwhisperer that makes use of the same concept. Here, flowing water blocks and minecarts are used to transport the baby villagers out of the farm.

Benefits of Breeding Villagers

Here are some of the major benefits of breeding the villager mob in Minecraft:

• Villagers in a specific area automatically make the Iron Golem spawn.
• A variety of villagers can help you get a variety of trade deals (as well as discounts).
• If you have enough farmers, you can create multiple automated food farms.
• Villagers such as librarians can provide rare items like enchanted books, which you can use for the best sword enchantments, best trident enchantments, and more.
• Aesthetically, your base can be more colorful and active with the villagers in it.

The time to expand your village is finally here. With the ability to breed villagers in Minecraft, you can now create large villages, get the best trading deals, and even set up automatic farms. With that said, don’t forget to share why you are breeding villagers in the comments below. Until then, keep exploring!