Featured image credit: Mojang
In Minecraft, the oceans and rivers team with life, from squids and dolphins to tiny little fish that float around happily.
While it is fun to watch them enjoy life, you may want to feed or breed them. Can that even be done, though, and if so, what do Salmon eat in Minecraft?
Keep reading this Minecraft tutorial, and see why Salmon are some of the most valuable animals in the game!
Do you know how to heal and breed horses in Minecraft?
What is Minecraft Salmon?
Minecraft Salmon is a passive mob and one of the many types of fish found in Minecraft.
Salmon primarily spawn underwater. Their spawn location is 12-32 blocks from the player in all types of water – even frozen rivers. You often find them swimming in groups of 3-5.
(Image credit: Mojang).
Salmon come in three sizes: small, normal-sized, and large. The most common type of fish is the normal-sized ones, and large ones only comprise 15.7% of the population.
Salmon can be caught using a fishing rod in any body of water, including lakes, rivers, and ocean biomes. They are a great source of food that can be cooked and eaten to restore health points and used in crafting recipes.
Salmon can also be used to tame a stray cat. And it can get various animals into love mode, so they start breeding.
Minecraft Salmon Diet
Salmon in Minecraft does not technically have a diet.
Like every animal in the game, they will not seek anything to eat alone. If they did have a diet, though, it would likely be similar to their real-life brethren.
(Image credit: Mojang).
Outside in real life, once salmon reach adulthood, they eat shrimp, eels, squid, and other fish. In captivity, they tend to have a fish food diet given by their owner.
So if Minecraft fish ate, we would see them feeding upon their fellow fish. What a scene that would be.
Can You Breed Salmon in Minecraft?
Unfortunately, we cannot breed Salmon in Minecraft, as the developers decided they should spawn babies independently.
So if you wanted to breed the Great Salmon Army and rule your Minecraft world, I’m afraid that’s not an option.
If you want your own personal fish army (who doesn’t?), Axolotls are the way to go—those you can breed to protect you against Drowners. Also, Axolotls attack salmon on sight.
What do Salmon Dropped When Killed?
When salmon are killed, they drop one salmon (raw fish flesh) and have a 5% chance of dropping one bone meal in Java Edition.
In Minecraft Bedrock Edition, they have a 25% chance of dropping 1 – 2 bones (if it’s a large salmon). Small and medium-sized salmon can drop only bone.
This content was first published on GameDaft.com
(Image credit: Mojang).
Salmon don’t live for long in desert sand. Here the dropped item is raw salmon. Sushi time for me!
Ways of Acquiring Raw Salmon Fish
Getting raw salmon is incredibly easy and can be found nearly anywhere with a body of water. Here are some ways you can get your hand on these delicious fish:
Fishing and Transporting Salmon
Fishing with a rod is the first and most obvious way to get raw salmon. Every time you cast out your fishing rod, you have a significant chance of reeling in a salmon.
The Luck of the Sea enchantment decreases the chance of reeling in a fish slightly but increases the chance of acquiring treasure.
That or you will wind up with a raw cod, which is just the reskinned sibling of the salmon.
You can carry a salmon in a water bucket, giving you a… tada… Bucket of Salmon.
So if you want to create a salmon farm, you can collect some and create a pond of water blocks near your home. Just make sure to give them plenty of space.
Killing Swimming Fish
Since update 1.13 and the following versions of Minecraft, Mojang added fish that swim around rivers and the ocean that drops their corresponding item when killed.
So if you can’t fish with a rod, you can punch some fish to death and cook them up. If you want to get creative, a trident with the impaling enchantment will instantly kill the salmon.
But if a trident isn’t your style, even a baby axolotl will attack Salmon on sight.
Hunting Polar Bears or Guardians
If you don’t want to get fish easily, you can fight hostile mobs like polar bears (found in the Ice Spikes Biome), Guardians, or Elder Guardians (found in lukewarm ocean biomes).
Polar bears have a 25% to drop 0-2 raw salmon, while Guardians and Elder Guardians have a 2.5% to drop a random fish. Baby polar bears will not drop any fish as they have been unable to go hunting independently.
Other ways to get Salmon
In Minecraft creative mode, you can get a spawn egg called Salmon Spawn Egg. The egg can’t be crafted in the game. You can use the spawn egg to spawn a salmon.
(Image credit: Mojang).
If you’ve enabled cheats, you can open the chat windows (press T on your keyboard) and use the give command:
/give @p salmon
This will give you some raw salmon in your inventory.
You can also summon a salmon:
/summon salmon
This will spawn a salmon in front of you.
Uses of Salmon in Minecraft
Now that you have slain some local-friendly salmon, it is time to use their remains in several ways.
Namely, feeding yourself and your pets and trading with the local fisherman who then sells the fish at a higher price to their fellow villagers.
Salmon is, first and foremost, a Food Item
The first and main use of salmon is to feed yourself because fish are delicious and can be an excellent food choice for the early to mid-game.
While you can eat raw salmon for two hunger points, it is much better to cook it.
(Image credit: Mojang).
Cooked salmon increases the food score from two to six food points and 9.6 saturation points, which is way better for your buck.
Trading
If you have more fish than you can use or do not like its taste, find yourself some Journeyman Fisherman villagers in a village.
They will trade you one emerald for 13 raw salmon. Not the best deal ever, but it can be an alright way to get rid of extra raw salmon.
Apprentice Fishermen will also take raw salmon from you, but instead of giving you emeralds, they charge you an emerald to cook the salmon.
If, for some reason, you have emeralds and no furnace, this is an option for getting food.
Feeding Animals
Salmon in Minecraft is, first and foremost, a food item. You can use raw salmon for feeding cats, ocelots, dogs, and dolphins.
Dogs love all raw meat in Minecraft, and feeding them salmon will improve their health slightly and, when fully healed, induce breeding.
(Image credit: Mojang).
Feeding raw salmon to cats will result in a ⅓ chance of taming it and is used for breeding two cats together. This is a great trick if you’re a cat lover and want baby cats.
Minecraft cats and ocelots are now different animals, so you can no longer use raw salmon to tame ocelots.
Instead, the raw salmon is used to increase your trust and breed them.
The final animal that can be fed raw salmon is the dolphin. By feeding a dolphin, not only do you increase your trust level with it, but it will swim to the nearest underwater ruin or shipwreck and locate chests.
So if you are having difficulty finding shipwrecks, do some fishing, and befriend a dolphin to let them lead you to the buried treasure you seek.
Conclusion
Salmon are cute and common passive aquatic mobs in Minecraft that, unfortunately, cannot be bred and seemingly live off pure air and sunshine.
However, they are handy as a food item, especially when cooked. They also work great as animals’ food, and you can fx use them to tame cats and breed dolphins.
So even though you can’t breed salmon, you can use their meat to tame and breed other animals.
If you found this article helpful, check out how to repair a bow in Minecraft so you can shoot those fish from the shore. Until next time, happy gaming!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jan has played video games since the early 1980s. He loves getting immersed in video games as a way to take his mind off stuff when the outside world gets too scary. A lifelong gamer, the big interest led to a job as a lecturer on game sound at the University of Copenhagen and several written articles on video games for magazines.