Feeding Llamas in Minecraft: What They Eat and How to Tame Them

Llamas make solid pack companions, right up until you forget to feed them. An ignored llama is a spitting llama, and the smell sticks around longer than most player would like. Knowing what to put in their mouth keeps everyone happy and dry.

What Llamas Will Actually Eat

The menu is short: wheat and hay bales. Each option carries different stats worth knowing before you waste a stack.

Wheat is the budget pick. A single piece:

• Restores one heart of health.
• Cuts 10 seconds off a baby llama's growth timer.
• Raises an untamed llama's temper by 3.

Hay bales are the upgrade option. One bale:

• Restores 5 hearts.
• Speeds up baby growth by 1 minute 30 seconds.
• Bumps temper by 6.

Once a llama is tamed, a hay bale also doubles as a breeding trigger. Feed two tamed llamas hay bales and love mode kicks in. Wheat does not work for that part.

Taming the Stubborn Ones

There is no shortcut for taming a llama. The process is climb on, get bucked off, repeat. Each successful mount has a chance of producing hearts, at which point the llama is yours.

Feeding wheat or hay bales between attempts raises that temper stat behind the scenes, which directly increases the odds that the next ride sticks. Hay bales are more efficient, but wheat is perfectly fine when a wheat farm is the only thing nearby.

Where Llamas Spawn

Java and Bedrock biomes

• Savanna Plateau (groups of 4)
• Windswept Hills (4 to 6)
• Windswept Forest (4 to 6)
• Windswept Gravelly Hills (4 to 6)

Bedrock Edition exclusive biomes

• Savanna (4)
• Windswept Savanna (4)

Herds spawn naturally across the overworld in the biomes listed above. The fastest no-travel option, however, is a Wandering Trader. Traders appear almost anywhere with two llamas tied to them on leads.

In Java Edition, cutting a llama off the trader's lead resets it back to untamed, so the riding minigame still applies. In Bedrock Edition, the same act tames the llama immediately for whoever freed it. It is not the most ethical way to start a herd, but free livestock in the early hours of a world is hard to refuse.