Sheep

Sheep are common passive mobs that supply wool and mutton and are found in many of the grassy biomes. Sheep can be attached to a lead.

Spawning

The majority of sheep are white, with an 81.836% chance of spawning. The light gray, gray and black sheep each have a 5% chance of spawning, or a 15% chance collectively. Brown sheep have an uncommon 3% chance to spawn. Pink sheep have a rare chance of 0.164% of spawning naturally.

If a sheep monster spawner is placed via /setblock, the sheep model spinning inside appears with one of the six naturally spawning colors. Independently from the displayed color, all six variants are able to spawn, the usual chances apply. To guarantee that sheep always spawn with the desired color, additional NBT tags can be applied to the monster spawner, utilizing the Color tag.

Natural generation

In Java Edition, 4 sheep may spawn above grass blocks, at a light level of 9 or higher, even on snowy taigas.

In Bedrock Edition, 2 to 3 sheep spawn during the world generation on grass blocks at the surface at a light level of 7 or higher with at least a 2 block space above, except in snowy plains, ice spikes or wooded badlands. They later spawn individually on grassy biomes. 5% spawn as lambs.

Two sheep sometimes spawn in shepherd houses, butcher houses and animal pens in villages.

Drops

An adult sheep drops:

• 1 wool of the corresponding color. Sheep that have not regrown their wool do not drop wool.
• 1–2 raw mutton (cooked mutton if killed while on fire or when in water using a sword with fire aspect). The maximum amount is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 1–5 with Looting III.
• 1–3 experience orbs if killed by a player or tamed wolf.

When sheared, sheep give 1–3 wool and do not take any damage. This is not affected by Fortune or Looting.

Upon successful breeding, 1–7 is dropped.

Killing a lamb yields no items nor experience.

Behavior

Sheep wander aimlessly and individually or in small flocks of two to four. Sheep avoid cliffs and hazardous areas if it warrants damage. Sheep emit hoarse bleats in mostly random patterns and especially when attacked. If harmed, sheep flee for a few seconds, but make no special attempt to avoid wolves.

Sheep are nonchalant to players or other mobs, but follow a player holding wheat within a six blocks radius.

Adult sheep can't fit through a gap if the 90-degree intersection of two fences is removed whereas the player and most other mobs can get through easily.

Sheep graze grass (but not tall grass), making it disappear, and grass blocks, changing them into dirt blocks. In Bedrock Edition, they can also eat ferns. Lambs graze grass much more often than adults and mature 1 minute faster when grazing. Sheep can eat grass through blocks that are less than a full block thick, including extremities such as honey blocks, as well as from inside minecarts. A sheared sheep regrows its wool after grazing. Therefore, if no grass is available, a sheep cannot regrow its wool after being sheared. If an adult sheep has the opportunity, the chance of eating grass is ¹⁄₁₀₀₀ every other game tick (¹⁄₅₀ for baby sheep). If /gamerule mobGriefing is set to false, grass blocks remain, but the sheep still regrow their wool.^[1]

Dyeing

Sheep's wool can be dyed by pressing the use key or the interact button while holding any dye. Sheared sheep cannot be dyed until their wool grows back after eating a grass block. Dyeing changes the color of the sheep's wool permanently or until the sheep is dyed again. The new wool colors will be inherited by baby sheep.

If a sheep is dyed and then sheared, it retains its new dyed wool color after the wool regrows. In Java Edition, the wool patches that are seen on a sheared sheep always appear white regardless of their actual color.^[2] The wool texture on the sheep's face also always appear white regardless of their actual color.

Easter eggs

An evoker can also change a sheep's wool color if the evoker is unengaged in combat and /gamerule mobGriefing is set to true. Then it can change the wool color of any blue sheep within 16 blocks to red. It signals the spell by producing orange color particles () and making a "wololo" sound. This is a reference to the priest unit of the 1997 game Age of Empires.

If a sheep is named jeb_, its wool cycles through all dye colors in a similar manner to prismarine. This is purely a visual effect. A sheep named jeb_ can still be dyed without changing the rainbow effect and any wool obtained from one of these sheep has the most recent color as if the sheep was unnamed.

Breeding

Sheep can be bred using wheat, after which they spawn a lamb. They cannot breed for five minutes after the lamb appears.

If the parents have compatible wool colors (meaning that the corresponding dye items could be combined into a third dye color), the resulting lamb inherits a mix of their colors (e.g., blue sheep + white sheep = light blue baby sheep). If the dye colors cannot normally be mixed, the lamb spawns with the same color as one of the parents, chosen randomly, regardless of whether one or both parents have been sheared.

The 20-minute growth of lamb can be slightly accelerated using wheat. Each use takes 10% off the remaining time to grow up. It can also accelerate its own growth by eating grass.

Sounds

Java Edition:
Sheep use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

Bedrock Edition:

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Entity data

Sheep have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Java Edition:

Achievements

Advancements

History

Issues

Issues relating to "Sheep" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Gallery

Colors

Renders

• 
  A white baby sheep that has been sheared (sheared baby sheep are only available through commands)
• 
  A jeb_ sheep.
• 
  A jeb_ baby sheep.
• 
  The Secret Sheep, featured in the Trails & Tales Event.

Screenshots

• 
  The first screenshot on breeding released by Notch.
• 
  A dying sheep mob.
• 
  Brown, light gray, gray, pink and black are 5 of the naturally spawning colors of a sheep.
• 
  A large flock of sheep, along with some chickens.
• 
  A baby sheep and an adult sheep.
• 
  The sheep grass-eating animation.
• 
  The baby sheep grass-eating animation.
• 
  Sheep that have been dyed by the player.
• 
  The relative probabilities of naturally spawned sheep colors.
• 
  A sheared baby sheep next to its parent. (sheared baby sheep are available only via commands)
• 
  Snowy grass next to a patch of dirt that a sheep has eaten.
• 
  A sheep with a blue head.
• 
• 
  Z-fighting in the sheep's legs while invisible, in Spectator mode.
• 
  Rare occurrence of a pink sheep.
• 
  Sheep bugged in a tree. This is on an old version of Minecraft.
• 
  Flock of sheep in a swamp biome.
• 
  The foot of a sheep.
• 
  The sheep's color around their face and overlay when sheared corresponds to their wool color in Bedrock Edition.
• 
  A sheep before Pocket Edition Alpha 0.6.0.
• 
  Pink sheep before Pocket Edition Alpha 0.8.0.
• 
  All of the possible sheep wool colors (dyed by the player.) Sheep have dyed wool remnants.
• 
  A yellow sheep during Pocket Edition Alpha 0.7.1.

Cosmetics

• 
  Sheep Man, a skin included in the second Legacy Console skin pack.
• 
  A naked version of Sheep Man from the same pack.
• 
  Top Hat Sheep, a skin featured in the 1st Birthday skin pack.
• 
  The "Mummy Sheep," featured in the Halloween Edition mash-up pack and Minecraft Mini-Series.

In other media

• 
  Artwork of a sheep alongside Steve and a pig.
• 
  Various dyed sheep as shown in the World of Color Update artwork.
• 
  A brown sheep in promotional artwork for the first Caves & Cliffs update.
• 
  A sheep in official artwork for the Education Edition.
• 
  A Sheep as it appears in Minecraft Story Mode.
• 
  Concept art of an Inky Sheep, a unique variation of sheep featured in Minecraft Earth.
• 
  A Sheep as it appears in Minecraft Dungeons.
• 
  Sheep pictured in the Mobestiary.
• 
  LEGO minifigure of cyan sheep.
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  LEGO minifigure of purple lamb.
• 
  A "Super Cute" Sheep from the 18th line of Minecraft Mini-Figures.
• 
  Baby sheep plush made by JINX.
• 
  "My Base is Your Base," an official T-Shirt design featuring a build of a red sheep.

References