I still remember the first time I stumbled across a herd of llamas while trekking through a Minecraft windswept hill biome. I was loaded down with enchanted gear and extra cobblestone from a 3-hour mining trip, and I’d heard these fluffy mobs could act as portable chests if I got them on my side. I fumbled through my inventory trying every food I had, from steak to carrots, before I realized I had no clue what do llamas on Minecraft eat. If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in the same spot, this guide breaks down everything you need to know to feed, tame, and breed these handy mobs.
What Do Llamas on Minecraft Eat, Exactly?
Llamas only eat two types of food in vanilla Minecraft, and using the right one for your goal will save you a ton of wasted resources. If you’re still getting familiar with mob mechanics, it’s easy to mix up their diet with other herd animals like cows or sheep, but their food preferences are far more limited than you might expect.
Wheat is the go-to food for taming wild llamas. Each piece of wheat you feed an untamed llama has a 5% chance to boost its taming progress, and you’ll see small red hearts pop up above its head when the food works. You don’t have to feed them wheat to tame them, but it cuts down the number of times you’ll get bucked off when you try to mount them.
Hay bales are used for breeding and healing injured llamas. They have no effect on taming progress, so don’t waste them on wild llamas. A single hay bale restores 10 full hearts of health to a damaged llama, which is way faster than waiting for it to heal on its own over time. You’ll also need hay bales if you want to breed two tamed llamas to make a baby.
Baby llamas can also be fed wheat to speed up their growth. Each piece of wheat cuts 10 seconds off their total growth time, so if you have a surplus of wheat from your farm, you can get a new adult llama in less than 20 minutes instead of the full 20 minutes it takes for them to grow naturally.
How to Use Food to Tame a Llama Successfully
Taming a llama isn’t as straightforward as taming a horse, even though the process looks similar at first glance. You’ll want to gather at least 10 pieces of wheat before you head out looking for llamas, since they only spawn in meadow and windswept hill biomes that can be hard to find repeatedly. If you’re still unsure what do llamas on Minecraft eat for taming, stick to wheat and you’ll never go wrong.
First, approach a wild llama slowly with an empty hand. If you have a weapon or tool equipped, you might accidentally hit it, which will make it spit at you and become hostile for a few seconds. Right click the llama to mount it, and it will almost always buck you off immediately. Keep mounting it every time it throws you off, and feed it a piece of wheat between attempts to speed up the process.
You’ll know the llama is tamed when it stops bucking you off and large red hearts pop up above its head. You don’t need a saddle to ride a tamed llama, but you will need a carpet to put a decoration on its back and a lead to guide it around. Unlike horses, you can’t control the direction a llama moves while you’re riding it, so you’ll need to use a lead to bring it back to your base.
One common mistake new players make is trying to tame wandering trader llamas. Even if you feed them wheat, these llamas are tied to the wandering trader and can never be tamed, so don’t waste your food on them. Wait for wild, unclaimed llamas in mountain biomes instead.
Extra Perks of Feeding Your Llamas Properly
Feeding your llamas the right food doesn’t just let you tame and breed them. It also unlocks a bunch of useful perks that make survival mode far easier, especially if you like to explore far from your base. A well-fed, well-bred llama can cut down the number of trips you need to make back to your base to drop off loot by half.
Llamas can have between 3 and 15 inventory slots, depending on their strength stat, and breeding two high-strength llamas gives you a higher chance of getting a baby with even more slots. That means if you breed your strongest llamas repeatedly, you can eventually get a llama that carries almost a full extra inventory’s worth of items for you.
Some of the best uses for tamed, well-fed llamas include:
- Using them as mobile storage for long mining or exploration trips, so you don’t have to dump valuable items like diamonds or enchanted books when your inventory is full
- Lining them up on leads to make a caravan that carries all your supplies when you’re moving bases across thousands of blocks of the Overworld
- Breeding rare colored llamas (white, cream, brown, gray) to decorate your base or make a themed animal farm for your survival world
You can attach up to 10 extra llamas to a lead attached to a single tamed llama, so you don’t have to carry multiple leads for your caravan. That means you can have 11 llamas total carrying items for you with only one lead in your hand, which is perfect for moving entire bases across the map.
If you’re playing on a multiplayer survival server, you can even breed high-strength llamas to trade with other players who don’t want to spend time taming and breeding their own. They’re one of the most underrated valuable items to trade for diamonds or enchanted gear.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Feeding Minecraft Llamas
Even if you know what food to give llamas, it’s easy to make small mistakes that waste resources or even make llamas hostile to you. A lot of new players mix up what do llamas on Minecraft eat vs what horses eat, so don’t feel silly if you tried feeding a llama a golden carrot at first.
First, don’t try to feed llamas anything other than wheat or hay bales. They will ignore foods like apples, carrots, steak, or golden carrots, so you’re just wasting your hard-earned supplies for no reason. Unlike most other passive mobs, llamas have no interest in any food outside their very limited diet.
Never hit a llama after you feed it, as it will become aggressive and spit at you, and it will lose all taming progress if you haven’t fully tamed it yet. It can take up to 10 minutes for a llama to stop being hostile after you hit it, so it’s always better to back off if you think you might accidentally swing at it.
Don’t feed hay bales to llamas if you’re only trying to tame them. Since one hay bale is crafted from 9 pieces of wheat, you’re wasting 8 extra pieces of wheat per hay bale for no benefit, since hay bales don’t affect taming progress at all. Save the hay bales for breeding and healing, and only use wheat for taming and speeding up baby llama growth.
If you’re trying to breed llamas, make sure they have at least 2 blocks of empty space above them, and no blocks blocking the area around them. If they’re in a cramped pen, they won’t enter breeding mode even if you feed them both hay bales. You’ll also have to wait 5 minutes after breeding a pair of llamas before you can breed them again, so don’t waste extra hay bales trying to get them to breed again immediately.
At the end of the day, figuring out what do llamas on Minecraft eat is the first step to adding one of the most useful passive mobs to your survival crew. Whether you’re looking for extra storage for a long Nether trip, want to make a fun caravan for moving bases, or just want to add some fluffy friends to your base farm, knowing the right foods to use will save you a ton of time and frustration. Next time you spot a herd of llamas while exploring, grab a stack of wheat from your farm, and you’ll have a new travel companion in no time.