In Minecraft, wolves eat many kinds of meat. However, depending on the version, they may not eat fish or meaty stews. You’ll need to feed a wolf to tame it or breed it with other wolves.
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What Wolves Can Eat in the Bedrock and Java Editions
Here’s a breakdown of what wolves can eat in Minecraft and how much it heals them in the Bedrock Edition:
- Bones: 0 Hearts
- Tropical Fish: 0.5 Hearts
- Pufferfish: 0.5 Hearts
- Raw Cod: 1 Heart
- Raw Salmon: 1 Heart
- Raw Mutton: 1 Heart
- Raw Rabbit: 1.5 Hearts
- Raw Porkchop: 1.5 Hearts
- Raw Beef: 1.5 Hearts
- Rotten Flesh: 2 Hearts
- Cooked Cod: 2.5 Hearts
- Cooked Rabbit: 2.5 Hearts
- Cooked Chicken: 3 Hearts
- Cooked Mutton: 3 Hearts
- Cooked Salmon: 3 Hearts
- Cooked Porkchop: 4 Hearts
- Steak (Cooked Beef): 4 Hearts
- Rabbit Stew: 5 Hearts
You can’t feed wolves as many options in the Java Edition, as there are only 12 food sources for wolves compared to the Bedrock Edition’s 19 food sources. However, here’s what you can give your favorite canines to munch on and how much it heals:
- Bones: 0 Hearts
- Raw Chicken: 0.5 Hearts
- Cooked Chicken: 0.5 Hearts
- Raw Porkchop: 1 Heart
- Cooked Porkchop: 1 Heart
- Raw Beef: 1 Heart
- Steak (Cooked Beef): 1 Heart
- Raw Rabbit: 1 Heart
- Cooked Rabbit: 1 Heart
- Raw Mutton: 1 Heart
- Cooked Mutton: 1 Heart
- Rotten Flesh: 1 Heart
Thankfully, wolves seem to be immune to the adverse effects of Rotten Flesh and certain raw meats. You can tell how much HP a wolf has by noting the position of its tail. The higher up a wolf’s tail, the more HP it will have. The maximum HP for a tamed wolf is 5 Hearts. Wild wolves only have 4 Hearts maximum, and their relatively lower tail postures indicate this.
Other Items You Can Use on Wolves
In addition to Bones and various kinds of meat, you can also use dyes and a Lead on a wolf. If you use any color of dye on a tamed wolf’s collar, you will change it to the color of the dye you used. Additionally, this little trick can be used on tamed cats as well.
How to Tame Wolves by Feeding Them
Unfortunately, you can’t tame wolves with foods that you like—such as Pumpkin Pie. You can only tame wild wolves by giving them Bones. Each Bone used on a wolf will be consumed, but will only have a 33% chance of taming them. Because of this, you’ll want to bring many Bones when out taming wolves.
Where to Find Wolves
Wolves can spawn in any forest, taiga, old-growth taiga, or snowy taiga biomes as well as their sub-biomes. However, the flower forest sub-biome is an exception to wolf-spawning. Furthermore, wolves will always spawn in packs of four individuals with 10% of them being pups.
Additionally, all wolves that spawn naturally will be wild. And, if you attack them, they will become hostile. When you attack one wolf, it and every wolf within 33 blocks will begin attacking you. For this reason, you should never pick a fight with a pack of wolves.
How to Breed Wolves By Feeding Them
To breed two wolves, you’ll first need to tame them and then get their respective HP stats to 100%. Thankfully, you can feed them any kind of meat to make them enter love mode. Just keep in mind which version you’re playing and what foods heal them in that edition. Another thing you’ll need to remember is that you can only breed tamed wolves that are somewhat close to each other.
Breeding Delay and Raising Wolf Pups
You can breed wolves every 5 minutes. After that, you can give your mating pair almost any kind of meat to get them to make more pups. The only exceptions are Rabbit Stew and any kind of fish. Feeding wolf pups meat will cause them to grow 10% closer to adulthood. If you want a whole pack, be sure to supply your wolf army with lots of meat!
Wolf pups bred from two wolves that are both owned by you will be born tamed. However, wolf pups bred from parents belonging to different players will be born tamed to the player whose wolf is older.
The Benefits of Having Tamed Wolves
As you might expect, wolves are great protectors! They will fearlessly attack anything that attacks you. Furthermore, they will follow you around as you explore or build. However, if you don’t want them to follow you, you can interact with them to make them sit. Making a wolf sit will plant them in a spot until you interact with them again.
In addition to being a great defensive ally, wolves can also be cute companions. They have a bunch of subtle yet adorable behaviors. As some examples: tamed wolves will tilt their head at you to ‘beg’ for food if you’re holding a meat item and will shake off the water when they get out of a river or lake.
Conveniently, if you plan on traveling with tamed wolves, they can teleport to you if you get too far. If you get more than 12 blocks away from your wolf, they will snap to your location. While a bit emersion-breaking, this will prevent your wolf from getting lost and can let you rescue them if they get stuck. Additionally, wolves have pretty good pathing and will avoid dangerous cliffs and pools of lava. However, they don’t seem to mind crossing through rivers and lakes due to their sufficient swimming skills.
