- To breed villagers in Minecraft, you need to have at least two "willing" villagers and at least three beds.
- You can increase your villagers' "willingness" to breed by giving them food.
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Even in Survival mode, Minecraft gives you a tremendous amount of control over your world. You can grow forests, blow up mountains, enter new universes — there's not much that you can't do.
Your control extends to the game's NPCs, too. If you want to make more villagers without wandering around to find a new village, you can breed the villagers together. This might sound strange, but it's an efficient way to bump up a town's population, or even make your own city.
Here's how to breed villagers in Minecraft, either manually or with an automatic breeder.
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If you just want a few new villagers, breeding them is a pretty quick process. Here's what you'll need:
- At least two villagers
- At least one bed for every villager, plus one more
- Food — bread, carrots, potatoes, or beetroots
1. Get your villagers close to each other. The best way to do this is to build a wall around them and trap them inside, or build a structure and move a villager into it using a boat.
2. Once your villagers are stuck in a small space, place beds around them. You need to have more beds than you have villagers, since the child they make will need a bed too. And any bed you place needs to have at least two blocks of free space above it.
3. Now you'll need to increase the "willingness" of your villagers. Villagers will only breed once they're "willing" enough, and you can increase a villager's willingness by giving them food. Here's how effective each type of food is:
| Type of Food | Amount Needed to Make a Villager Willing |
| Bread | Three |
| Carrot | 12 |
| Potato | 12 |
| Beetroot | 12 |
4. Give your villagers food — you can just throw it at them — until hearts appear above their heads. This means that they're willing.
5. Wait. The next time two willing villagers bump into each other, they should stand together for a few moments and then spawn a baby villager between them.
You can continue this until you have as many villagers as you want — just remember that you need more beds than villagers. Baby villagers will "grow up" 20 minutes after they're born.
William Antonelli
Tech Reporter for Insider Reviews
William Antonelli (he/she/they) is a writer, editor, and organizer based in New York City. As a founding member of the Reference team, he helped grow Tech Reference (now part of Insider Reviews) from humble beginnings into a juggernaut that attracts over 20 million visits a month. Outside of Insider, his writing has appeared in publications like Polygon, The Outline, Kotaku, and more. He's also a go-to source for tech analysis on channels like Newsy, Cheddar, and NewsNation. You can find him on Twitter @DubsRewatcher, or reach him by email at wantonelli@businessinsider.com.
