How to Hatch Turtle Eggs in Minecraft

There are numerous different blocks and items in Minecraft that sometimes you forget some of them exist. One of those is definitely turtle eggs. They’re not difficult to get and in some instances extremely important. Yet turtle eggs are not a priority of most Minecraft players, so are often overlooked. In this guide though, we focus on turtle eggs, sharing how to obtain and hatch them. Also, we have shared some other crucial uses they have in Minecraft.

How to Get Turtle Eggs in Minecraft

Turtle eggs don’t generate naturally in the Minecraft world, but you can get them easily. All you need is two pieces of seagrass and two adult turtles. As you can probably tell, we will need to breed turtles in order to obtain turtle eggs. We’ve got a full dedicated guide on how to breed turtles in Minecraft, so follow the linked guide if you need any help with that process.

Once the turtle lays the eggs in Minecraft, you can pick them up and carry the eggs to a new location. If you want to move the eggs, you will need to use a silk touch tool. They will start dropping one by one, and not all at the same time. If you break the turtle eggs any other way, they will get destroyed. Also, don’t step on the eggs, as that will break them as well.

Steps to Hatch Turtle Eggs in Minecraft

Now that you have got turtle eggs, it’s time to hatch them. The eggs will hatch only if they are placed on a regular sand or red sand block. Eggs have 3 cracking stages before hatching and will need about 7 in-game days to do so. A crucial fact we should mention is that turtle eggs hatch significantly quicker during nighttime. They are almost guaranteed to crack during a certain time window at night.

So, if you need turtle eggs to hatch as soon as possible, you’ve got to pull an all-nighter a few nights. This will increase your chances and let the eggs hatch in 4 to 5 nights. Additionally, if the egg block contains multiple eggs, all eggs will hatch at the same time, so it’s much more efficient to keep them stacked up like that. Not to forget, turtle eggs will not make any progress towards hatching if the player is more than 128 blocks away.

Protecting Turtle Eggs and Baby Turtles

Now, if you think that you’ve moved the eggs and all you have to do is wait, you are very much wrong. Your job is not done yet. Because now it’s time to babysit the eggs. Some mobs are programmed to intentionally want to break the turtle eggs.

If there are two empty blocks above the eggs, mobs will pathfind directly to the eggs and actively trample them until they are destroyed. The mobs that have a tendency to do this are zombies, zombie villagers, husks, drowned, and zombified piglins.

Building a fence around the turtle eggs is just enough to keep the dangers at bay. Also, even though other mobs don’t intend to destroy the turtle eggs, they can. This goes for the player as well, so be careful around the eggs and make sure no mob gets close to them. Furthermore, unfortunately, the baby turtles are not completely safe either. When the turtles hatch, they will still be hunted by certain predators. Those mobs include:

• Zombies
• Zombie Villagers
• Husks
• Drowned
• Skeletons
• Strays
• Wither Skeletons
• Wild Ocelots
• Wild Wolves
• Stray Cats
• Foxes
• Zoglins
• Johnny Vindicators (Vindicators named Johnny using a name tag)
• Wardens
• Withers

Minecraft Turtle Egg Hatching Rewards

Once the baby turtles grow up, which takes about a whole Minecraft day (20 minutes) or less if you feed them seagrass, they will drop scutes, a rare and precious item.

You can use scutes to craft a turtle shell helmet, which requires 5 scutes. This helmet provides players with a certain buff, which is water breathing for an additional 10 seconds. Although this helmet is pretty cool, Minecraft potions do a much better job. So, if you want to raid an ocean monument, the potion of water breathing is far more efficient than the turtle shell helmet.

You may also use this helmet to create a whole new potion, that is Potion of Turtle Master. It’s a unique potion that provides slowness IV debuff and resistance III buffs. Again, even though it’s cool, it’s not used regularly.

Grown up turtles behave like most other mobs in Minecraft. Moreover, when you breed the turtles you hatched, they’ll remember the exact location they were born in and lay more turtle eggs there.

Other Uses for Turtle Eggs in Minecraft

Believe it or not, turtle eggs are far more important in Minecraft than just hatching turtles as pets. These eggs will never hatch unless you place them on sand blocks. So, they will always stay eggs, unlike the sniffer egg, which will hatch no matter where you put it.

Mob Farms

As mentioned above, zombies and the zombie variants will try to find a path to the turtle eggs and trample them. This is an extremely useful mechanic in mob farms. For example, if you want to separate zombies from the general mob farm, perhaps for setting up an iron farm, you can use turtle eggs, since only they’ll be attracted to them.

Apart from the mob farms in the Overworld, turtle eggs are the main ingredient for the gold farm in the Nether. Zombified piglins will rush towards any nearby turtle eggs, so you can make them fall into a pit where you’ll kill them. Most more efficient gold farm designs out there often use turtle eggs.

So if you want gold for trading with cleric villagers in Minecraft, curing zombie villagers with golden apples, or bartering with piglins for a way to farm some difficult resources in Minecraft, you’ll need some turtle eggs first.

Decoration

This may sound silly, but yes, you can use turtle eggs for decoration too. If you don’t place them on sand blocks, they will never hatch. Thus, you can go crazy with all the possible small and cute decorations using them. For instance, you can use them in a kitchen for subtle decor or outdoors for organic details. Thanks to its small and unique shape and also the ability to stack multiple eggs in the same block space, you’ll easily bring life to your Minecraft house ideas.

Frequently Asked Questions