In Minecraft, turtles are the only known source of scutes—an item that baby turtles drop upon growing up—and players can use those to create a special headgear called the turtle shell. Here is all you need to know about how to breed turtles in Minecraft.
Turtles are great passive mobs in Minecraft. They can walk on land as well as swim in the water. And while adult turtles are very big, baby turtles are the smallest of mobs. What’s more, baby turtles will drop scutes when they grow up. Players can use scutes to craft the turtle shell headgear, which grants the wearer the water breathing effect. This effect will add an extra 10 seconds of breathing underwater, thus allowing you to stay submerged for another 10 seconds without drowning. Turtle shells can also be used to brew potions of the turtle master, which may slow the movement of the player but will greatly reduce the damage taken. Those reasons alone are enough to farm for scutes in large amounts. Hence, learning how to breed turtles is the first step to creating your own turtle and scute farm in Minecraft.
Things You Will Need To Breed Turtles
Shears: Shears are tools used to shear sheep and break other blocks. Shears can be used to break and harvest seagrass to breed turtles. It can be crafted in a crafting table using two iron ingots or obtained through trading with novice-level shepherd villagers.
Seagrass: Seagrass is an aquatic plant that generates in all ocean biomes except in frozen oceans. Seagrass can be used to breed turtles as well as hasten the growth of baby turtles. It can only be harvested with shears; otherwise, it will break and drop nothing.
How To Craft Shears
- Find iron ores and mine them using a stone pickaxe or with a higher type of pickaxe. You will only need two iron ores to craft shears but you can mine for more if you want.
- Smelt the iron ores in a furnace to make iron ingots. You will need two iron ingots to make one pair of shears. To smelt the iron ores, place a fuel source at the bottom slot inside the furnace such as a coal or lava bucket and place the iron ores in the top slot. Wait until the smelting process is finished before taking the iron ingots out and dragging it to your inventory.
- Use the crafting table to craft shears. Place the first iron ingot in the center of the 3×3 crafting grid then you can place the second iron ingot diagonally in any direction. Click and drag the shears to your inventory to craft.
How To Breed Turtles
- First, you must gather some seagrass in order to breed turtles. Dive into the ocean and look for seagrass underwater. You can find seagrass growing on the ocean floor. Seagrass will look like tall underwater grass.
- Collect seagrass using a pair of shears. Hold the shears in one hand and use it by right-clicking on the seagrass. This will break the seagrass and drop the item. Once dropped, the item may float to the top. Simply collect the item by swimming over it.
- When you’ve collected at least 2 seagrass, search for 2 turtles that are near each other. The turtles should preferrably be on shore to make breeding easier.
- Feed each turtle with 1 seagrass. Hearts will appear on top of a turtle once it’s fed with a seagrass. Do this for both of the turtles to breed.
- The turtles will start the breeding process once 2 turtles are fed. If the breeding process is successful, green orbs will drop from them which you can collect to gain experience points.
- The pregnant turtle will then travel back to the shore where it first spawned and start digging vigorously for a few seconds.
- The pregnant turtle will then lay turtle eggs afterward. Turtles can lay eggs ranging from 1 egg up to 4 turtle eggs in one breeding session.
- Wait for the turtle eggs to hatch. This will take a long while but will usually occur during nighttime as turtle eggs hatch faster at night.
Once the turtle eggs hatch and baby turtles come out, it is only a matter of time until they are fully grown. When they grow from baby to adults, the turtles will drop scutes which you can collect to make a turtle shell helmet.
