Automated Animal Farming in Minecraft

Survival is necessary to beat the game and obtain the end-game rewards in Minecraft. But to do that, one must keep themselves healthy by consuming food items in the game. Meat items obtained from animal mobs are among the best food items players can consume or sustain themselves sufficiently. These meaty food items are obtainable from passive mobs such as cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, and rabbits. But unfortunately, there is not an endless supply of these mobs in the game. And sooner or later, the player may run out of meat to consume if not appropriately handled. So veteran players have built themselves effective and sustainable automated animal farms in the game to keep a substantial supply of meaty food items without the risk of running low on supply. And to make it easier, some of them built automatic farms that could easily do the work for them. This guide will show you a few common automated animal farms in the game that most players use for their base.

What is Automated Animal Farming in Minecraft?

Automated animal farming is farming for animal mob drops in Minecraft through automatic mechanisms. These mechanisms are entirely player-made and can be non-automatic, semi-automatic, or fully automatic. Most automated animal farms in the game include a mechanism for killing, a mechanism for cooking, and a mechanism for collecting the mob’s drops. Some mechanisms combine the killing and cooking mechanisms through fire or lava.

Automated Animal Farms in Minecraft

1. Simple Cooked Semi-Automated Meat Farm

This simple and easy automated farm to set up allows the player to breed animals and press the button. This can be reused in other animal mobs, and this farm has a high-efficiency rate when it comes to harvesting food. All cooked meats and other drops are automatically collected and can easily be piled into a location for easy collection by the player anytime. However, this meat farm is only semi-automated, which means that you have to do the killing yourself. Moreover, this farm only works for mobs such as cows, sheep, and pigs. This mob farm is not compatible with smaller mobs such as rabbits and chickens. Follow the steps below to learn how to create a simple automatic cooked meat farm.

1. First, build the holding area for the adult mobs with flowing water. Make sure to lead the adult mobs inside the area before placing down a flowing water source.
2. Next, have the adult mobs breed with each other until you have a lot of baby mobs to work with. Remember that the larger the farm area, the more you should breed them. Just make sure not to overpopulate the holding area.
3. Then build the collection area for the baby animal mobs, which should have a one-block-high entryway, and place a sign to block water flow from the adult area. The collection area must only be a one-block area, and the floor should be a single hopper connected to a chest.
4. Next, place a dispenser facing the collection area, and it should be holding a bucket of lava inside. This creates the killing mechanism for the meat farm.
5. Then place two separate red stone wires connected to the dispenser. Place down three repeaters on the first red stone wire, set to 4 ticks, 4 ticks, and 3 ticks, respectively. While on the second red stone wire, place one repeater that is set to the default 1 tick only.
6. Then finally, both of the red stone wires should connect to a single button which the player can press to start the farm. Let the baby animal mobs grow into adults first before killing them off, and keep at least a few adult mobs alive once you start killing them, as it will be difficult to breed them again once you run out of livestock.

2. Fully Automated Chicken Meat Cooker

This is another automated meat farm that is not resource-expensive to build and yet, can still provide the player with an infinite amount of cooked chicken meat without them having to do anything. Once you build this mechanism, you will likely never run out of food. Follow the steps below to learn how to build a fully automatic chicken meat cooker.

1. First, dig a one-block wide and two blocks deep hole in the ground.
2. Then place a single chest on the bottom of the hole, place a hopper on top of the chest, and place a non-flammable slab on top of the hopper.
3. Next, surround the slab with a 3-block high wall on each side. Destroy a block in the wall next to the slab and put a dispenser.
4. Then connect the dispenser to a red stone clock and place a hopper on top of the dispenser.
5. Pour lava onto the block just above the slab, ensuring that the lava is not leaking out anywhere else.
6. Then place down hoppers until it forms an entire floor. The hopper floor should be connected to the same hopper on the dispenser.
7. Create a cobblestone wall and roof surrounding the hopper floor in the form of a room-like structure, and leave a one-block hole on the roof and cover it with a trap door.

3. Simple Manual Meat Farm

This farm design is a simple and easy way to harvest raw meat in Minecraft. This farm uses water flow to direct mobs such as cows and pigs and kill them by utilizing fall damage. And since you can breed the mobs inside the farm itself, this farm design can be an effective renewable source of meat.

1. First, you must build a 12×12 fenced area to hold the cows in.
2. Next, place four dispensers facing upwards in all four corners of the farm and fill all the dispensers with water buckets.
3. Then connect all of the dispensers using red stone dust.
4. Next, dig a 13-block deep hole in the ground inside of the fenced area and build a hopper collection system at the very bottom of the hole. Alternatively, you can create a tall building-like area to hold the mobs in so you can collect their meat on ground level instead.

Just make sure that when building this farm, it should be at least 13 blocks deep or 13 blocks tall for them to be successfully killed once they hit the ground; otherwise, the mobs may have a chance of surviving and then escaping in the process.