One of the best parts of Minecraft is being able to do just about anything. Want to explore caves and slay monsters? You can do that. Want to build a palatial house with hundreds of rooms? You can do that, too. There’s no one right way to play Minecraft, which is one of the reasons it’s one of the most successful games on the planet.
Among the many options for activities to do is create a farm for the many peaceful mobs that call your server home. You can keep cows, pigs, chickens, and more in designated areas to farm resources, give your house an aesthetic vibe, or simply because you like the view.
If you want your Minecraft with a side of Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon, read on for the best Minecraft animal farm ideas.
Table of contents
7 best animal farm builds in Minecraft
Aesthetic barn
If you’re looking for something traditional yet fancy, look no further than this aesthetic barn and outdoor pen layout. Creator “LennyRandom” shared a complete video tutorial for the barn, so if you love the way it looks, you can follow it down to the last block.
The layout features an expansive barn with room for up to six kinds of animals, an enclosed grassy pen for animals to roam outside, a hay bale storage area, and a traditional ranch entrance sign. A greenhouse is also featured, as are some crop farms. The barn’s upper floor acts as a storage area and a general resting place for you to sit and enjoy the view.
Unlike many of the builds on this list, you can see that the creator has included Llamas in this farm design. You can always swap them out for horses if you want, or those could go inside the barn. Animals like a Wolf and Cat can also be seen in this build, although it’s up to you to add them or not. This build has both charm and functionality in spades.
Cottagecore barn
This build incorporates plenty of flowers, leaves, and mossy blocks to make your barn feel a little more connected to nature. While some of the other builds on this list have multiple buildings and enclosures constituting an entire farm, this design only has one large building.
In the video tutorial, creator “Sillyblocks” shows exactly how many of each block you need to create the build. These include several variations of wooden blocks like stripped logs, regular logs, stairs, fences, trap doors, and gates, as well as Cobblestone, barrels, glass, smokers, item frames, chains, bells, pots, different types of flowers, leaves, mushrooms, and more.
Animals have plenty of space to run around on the inside, while the light from the pretty lanterns outside ensures mobs won’t even think about getting close to your farm. The dirt-packed path leading to the front is the icing on the cake.
Utilitarian barn and pen
If you’re not interested in any of the many aesthetic farm looks but still want a nice place for your animals to stay, look no further than this pared-down animal pen. It has space for three different kinds of animals, a small side yard with water and hay, and a small roof with lanterns that give just enough light.
The entrance to the farm has a small but prominent archway above it, and it contains important design elements like a cauldron filled with water for the animals and hay bales for the horses and cows. If you’re eager to embrace the game’s roleplaying elements, you’ll be happy to know that the roof protects your animals from environmental elements like rain and, more importantly, lightning strikes.
Creator “LANSER” built the pen with Minecraft’s default texture pack, so you won’t need any modified textures to make this one work. It’s small and simple, but it gets the job done.
Wintry pen
Is winter your favorite season? You’ll love this more austere pen with wintry trees, dark wood, and a natural fence that protects animals from dangerous mobs. Creator “IamPixel” didn’t include a tutorial with the build, but it doesn’t look too hard to replicate: just find a quiet, snowy area and build a roughly circular pen with your choice of textured blocks.
The interior features a small covered area with room for hay and a gate that keeps everything inside. It’s a unique build that blends more seamlessly into Minecraft’s natural world than a lot of other builds.
The Meadowstead
The Meadowstead is the name we’ve given to a small but detailed farm build by Creator “armun.” It comes with everything from a “Hay Storage” area, Stable, and Pigsty to decorative elements like its very own pond, a section dedicated to crafting items, and several bee hives.
Various materials are required for this build, and collecting them will be vital if you want to attempt it in Survival mode. Here’s a rundown of all the materials you’ll need to build this base:
- Regular Bricks
- Stone Bricks
- Cracked Stone Bricks
- Mud Bricks
- Brick Stairs
- Polished Andesite
- Cobblestone (Both Regular as well as Mossy)
- Mossy Cobblestone Walls
- Mossy Cobblestone Stairs
- Soul Soil
- Coarse Dirt
- Podzol
- Spruce Logs
- Spruce Planks
- Spruce Stairs
- Spruce Slabs
- Spruce Doors
- Spruce Fences
- Spruce Fences Gates
- Spruce Trapdoors
- Dark Oak Stairs
- Oak Planks
- Oak Stairs
- Oak Slabs
- Oak Trapdoors
- Ladders
- Campfires
- Lanterns
- Regular Furnaces
- Blast Furnaces
- Chests
- Barrels
- Composters
- Cauldrons
- Grindstones
- Anvils
- Crafting Tables
- Beehives
- Bookshelves
- Item Frames
- Beds
- Carpets (Red, but you’re free to go with another color)
- Tripwire Hooks
- Hay Bales
- Sugar Cane
- Water Bucket
- Bone Meal
- Oak Leaves
- Lily Pads
- Rose Bushes
- Sunflowers
The stable has water and Hay Bales for your horses to consume, giving it an authentic and rustic look. It’s the main building on your farm and comes with a cozy upper floor, where you’ll have two rooms. One is carpeted and houses your bed, a lantern, and a chest, while you can use the other as additional storage.
The creator has made great use of trapdoors as windows and stairs to build the roof. You can use ladders to ascend to the upper floor. You have a lot of space to play around with, so Hay Storage can come beside the stable.
The pigsty is located in front of the stable in this build. It’s a little smaller but houses all the necessary aspects of the design, like water, hay bales, and barrels. You can find a large arch above the entrance to the farm, and it contains many decorative elements like a detailed well, bushes all around the area, different types of flowers, and a wheelbarrow made using a grindstone.
The Simple Farm
Minecraft is a sandbox game, meaning you can play around as much as you want, showing off your creativity and experimenting with different farm builds. But what if we scaled back a bit? The Simple Farm is so named because, you guessed it, it keeps things simple.
Every animal gets its own space, but all of them are in the exact location, right beside each other. You could always build a super decorative and aesthetic farm, but keeping it simple can help you focus on some other, larger build like your house.
In the build above, we’ve got all manner of farm animals, from pigs and sheep to chickens, cows, horses, and even skeleton horses (they spawned close ,by so we hitched them next to the regular horses), but you can add even more of them if you wish. The order doesn’t matter either; just have them all in the same location and build all enclosures next to each other.
Bring some Camels over, or maybe dig out a small pond and fill it with Axolotls. All you need to do is keep it simple and accessible, ensuring there’s enough space in every enclosure to get animal resources like leather, milk, eggs, chicken, mutton, pork, and more.
The Mish-Mash
Speaking of scaling back and keeping it simple, what if you’re speedrunning Minecraft or just want to prioritize getting resources like animal meat and eggs, leather, wool, and milk? Just make one big enclosure and stuff every animal in.
While this build is far from aesthetic or decorative, it can provide large amounts of animal-specific items and is easily accessible. In addition, you don’t need to worry about building barns, chicken coops, and sheds.
You can start with a small amount of animals and increase their number as you progress. You can do this by breeding them, so keep all the foods necessary for them to breed close at hand. Here’s a list of some animals you can use for food and how you can breed them:
- Chicken – Wheat seeds, pumpkin seeds, melon seeds, beetroot seeds, torchflower seeds, and pitcher pods.
- Cows – Wheat
- Pigs – Carrot, Potato, and Beetroot
- Rabbit – Dandelion, Carrot, and Golden Carrot
- Goat – Wheat
- Sheep – Wheat
When using the Mish-Mash, you’ll still have to separate animals like horses and camels, as they aren’t used for their meat. Your main goal with this farm should be to “cull the herd” when necessary, as Jacob Seed from Far Cry 5 would say, netting you and huge amount of resources. You can do this by burning them using Flint and Steel and getting cooked variations of their meats as drops. However, the better option would be to use an upgraded and possibly enchanted sword or axe.
What makes a good animal farm in Minecraft?
A good Minecraft farm depends on a variety of factors. Making enclosures for your animals and having them close to each other is always a good choice, as fences can prevent them from escaping or wandering around. Many animals are sources of food or important items like leather, so keeping them close and in a confined space can be profitable for you.
In addition, you can separate all the enclosures and ensure that every animal has its own space. This gives you easy access to each one and is convenient. However, don’t forget to hang lanterns or place torches to light up your farm to prevent hostile creatures from spawning in the middle of an enclosure.
You could go the aesthetic route and build large Barns, Stables, Chicken coops, and Pigsties, or you could just start building and trust in the process. The aim of Minecraft is to have fun, so experiment with different builds and see what you like.
