A lot of general mobs in Minecraft are equivalent to various animals from the real world. Pigs, horses, rabbits, and sheep are common throughout the biomes. Today, we’ll look into sheep specifically, covering their traits and behaviors in an overview of the mob.
Sheep
An exceptionally plentiful mob, the sheep is one of the most useful passive mobs in the Overworld. With the Minecraft sheep, we get a few nice materials and a potential and constant source of wool. Sheep are consistently present throughout Minecraft’s biomes, making it possible to run into them often. Just about any grassy biome will result in these mobs cropping up.
Sheep can spawn with different coats of wool, depending on random chance. The sheep are most commonly white, with an 81% chance for them to be this color. The light gray, gray, as well as black sheep will each have a 5% chance of spawning. This leads to a collective 15% chance of them spawning.
However, that’s not all. The rarer sheep are brown sheep who can spawn with a 3% chance. They aren’t even the rarest ones, as a rarer pink sheep may appear. Pink sheep will have a 0.16% chance of spawning at all. These numbers don’t even take into account the possibility for the sheep to spawn as babies, which are even rarer to see as they only spawn 5% of the time.
When the sheep is generated in the Java Edition, it will be in groups of 4. A light level of 9 and a grassy terrain are required for the sheep to spawn at all. This does change in Bedrock Edition.
In the Bedrock Edition, 2 to 3 sheep will spawn at once. The only change otherwise is that they need a light level of 7 instead of 9. Additionally, these sheep can later spawn individually in grassy biomes. In either case, there is a 5% chance for a sheep to spawn as a baby sheep.
Sheep Behavior
With the sheep in Minecraft, we can expect them to roam around in flocks, usually of two to four. The sheep avoid the cliffs and hazards, though if they don’t result in direct damage, the sheep may not avoid them. Randomly, sheep will bleat. This happens more commonly when they are attacked. Additionally, if harmed, the sheep will run around for a few seconds even though they take no special note of avoiding hostile mobs that may damage them.
Sheep do not pay much attention to the player, preferring to roam around and occasionally graze grass. This will result in grass disappearing, but only if it isn’t tall grass. The grass block then turns into a dirt block. This grazing has an extra effect, making the sheared sheep regrow their wool.
Sheep Drops
Adult sheep have a few drops available. The Minecraft adult sheep will drop a single stack of wool of the same color as the sheep. If the sheep were sheared when killed, it would drop no wool. But, of course, it’s always more fruitful to shear the sheep than kill it for wool.
Sheep can also drop mutton. If the sheep was on fire, it would be cooked, while drop from sheep that weren’t on fire would drop raw mutton. These drops can drop in stacks of 1 or 2. However, those numbers can increase to 5 if Looting is leveled to the max.
Sheep Dye
We can dye it differently by using any type of dye on the sheep. This only works on sheep that haven’t been sheared recently. The dye will immediately change the color of the sheep. This change will remain permanent even if the player shears it again. Additionally, should the dyed sheep spawn a baby, the baby will inherit the color.
