Tutorial:Wool farming
Mechanics
You can get wool by shearing sheep, killing sheep, or crafting it out of string. Shearing sheep is often advantageous as it means that they can regrow their wool by eating grass (if the game rule doMobGriefing is set to true). They will eat grass soon after it grows, observers can be used to detect grass being eaten and activate dispensers, which can shear sheep if their hitbox is in the block in front of the dispenser.
The wool will fall off and will usually go into a hopper for collection.
Sheep will also regrow wool regularly. The chance of eating grass is 1⁄1000 per game tick, so a sheep is 63% likely to regrow new wool after 50 seconds, and over 90% likely to regrow new wool after 2 minutes.[1]
Automatic sheep shearing design
There are many designs that can be stacked to make large wool farms. The sheep can also be dyed to produce different wool colors.
How to build an automatic wool farm
- Place down a dispenser facing horizontally.
- Lay down grass blocks 1 block lower and one block in front of the dispenser.
- Build a pen out of glass (preferably the color of the sheep).
- Lure a sheep inside or create a piston contraption to move the sheep into the pen.
- Put an observer underneath the dispenser facing at the grass block to power the dispenser,
- Then put a piece of redstone dust on top of the block behind the observer (which is in behind the dispenser) to power the dispenser.
- Put a shear into the dispenser.
- Place minecarts with hoppers underneath the grass to collect the items.
- Make a room full of chests that the minecarts bring the wool into.
Getting Wool From String Dupers
As 4 string can craft 1 wool, a string duper (in versions prior to Java Edition 1.21.2) may be used to create a wool farm. This however is a less efficient way to get dyed wools and requires the player to manually craft them.
Videos
Flowfall Riverboy - Minecraft Sheep Farm 1.14 - 1.16.2+
Beef And Cheese - Simeplist Minecraft Sheep Farm 1.14+
RAHsite - Automatic Industrial Wool Farm - Minecraft Bedrock & Java 1.16+
RAHsite - Automatic Wool Farm & Flower Farm - Minecraft Bedrock 1.16+
MHC - The ULTIMATE String Duper for Minecraft 1.20 (OVERPOWERED!)
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