kid playing minecraft mac
You can breed villagers in Minecraft using common materials.
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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.

How to breed villagers in Minecraft

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.

A Minecraft screenshot, with two villagers inside of a wooden pen with three beds.
Get your villagers into an enclosed space.
Mojang; William Antonelli/Insider

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.

Two Minecraft villagers with hearts above their head.
Hearts will appear above the villagers' heads once they're willing.
Mojang; William Antonelli/Insider

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.

A baby villager in Minecraft, looking up at two adult villagers.
The baby villager will stay near its parents.
Mojang; William Antonelli/Insider

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.

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