Now that we got the 1.0 release on xbox, farming is a bit more feasible.
Here's what I got working for a farm pretty quick last night:
gather up lots of seeds so you can get a 5x5 garden of wheat growing. Get enough wood to make a fence and gate around this area to protect it from MOBs stomping on it. You don't need to water it, so don't waste space on water ditches like MC villagers do.
The wheat can be used to make bread, but it's also useful to attract animals and to get breeding working.
Making a stockyard for livestock (cows, pigs, sheep)
Gather a ton of wood and make a lot of fence posts and 2 or more gates.
Find an open field, preferably with a 1 block elevation shift. Build a pen with the fence posts in the lowest part of the field, with at least 2 walls next to the higher level ground. This makes a one way wall that animals can wander into your pen, and not be able to get out.
On one side of this pen, connect a second, smaller pen (3x3 to 5x5 space). Install 2 gates so you can enter this small pen, close the gate, then enter the larger pen. This forms a lock so you can exit the pen without animals getting out. it also gives another way to lead animals in from the outside without having others escape.
Later, If you have enough fencing, make a larger pen area on the 2nd elevation of land against the first pen. This enlarges your overall stockyard and gives you a mechanism to bring in more animals, without getting crowded by your existing herd.
How to lure animals into the pen.
Get some wheat and put it in your active slot
now approach some animals. There's a chance it won't work, but most animals will turn and follow you. Now lead them to the part of the fence that is adjacent to the higher land. This makes it easy to simply walk into the pen and they will follow you in.
Or, lead them to the chute you built, open the outer gate, lead them inside, close the outer gate, then open the inner gate and lead them further in and close the inner gate.
change off of wheat to get them to stop following you.
Build a snowman INSIDE your pen (2 blocks of snow + pumpkin) to kill hostile mobs if they get inside
Breeding:
I haven't perfected this yet, so somebody may revise this a bit.
inside your pen, get 2 of the same kind of animals. Feed them each wheat which will activate love mode on both. hearts will ping out from them. A short moment later, a baby animal will appear.
I have not been able to get the baby animal to grow up. feeding it wheat wasn't possible. Maybe it just takes time. I had a ton of animals in my pen, so it was hard to count them.
Seperating animals:
At the moment, I have a huge mess of animals (5-6 of each kind). I reckon for breeding, it might be handy to isolate them to pairs. My proposal to solve this is a new kind of chute.
Build a long chute (1 block wide corridor, possibly with regular blocks as walls so you can attach levers). One end connects to the main stockyard, the other has an 'airlock" so you can lead the animals into the chute, and exit without them. it might take a friend to close the starting end after the chute is full so animals won't escape.
This chute chould have a gate every other block, so you can isolate animals to one per block. (levers on the outside would enable this).
Now, on the side of the chute would be gates, at each of these gaps. These would lead to the correct animal pen (once again, more chutes so you can lead them).
For convenience, you're going to want a gate on each side of the pens, maybe more, so you can exit without having to walk all around. But any gate going straight to the outside is a risk of an escapee.
Some folks have reported animals disappearing, but I have not had that problem.
Water makes the wheat grow a lot faster, but as you said it's not necessary. As for keeping the animals in the pens . . . . there is a huge bug at the moment where they dissappear if you leave the area. I had 40+ animals in a 30x30 pen, went mining 100+ blocks away, came back, they were mostly gone.
I was also gutted about the zero dmg snow balls, but they can be used to distract the hostile mobs. Kind of.
Good job for the effort you put into your post, but in all honesty, I think most people will know how to make a farm by now.
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Here's what I got working for a farm pretty quick last night:
gather up lots of seeds so you can get a 5x5 garden of wheat growing. Get enough wood to make a fence and gate around this area to protect it from MOBs stomping on it. You don't need to water it, so don't waste space on water ditches like MC villagers do.
The wheat can be used to make bread, but it's also useful to attract animals and to get breeding working.
Making a stockyard for livestock (cows, pigs, sheep)
Gather a ton of wood and make a lot of fence posts and 2 or more gates.
Find an open field, preferably with a 1 block elevation shift. Build a pen with the fence posts in the lowest part of the field, with at least 2 walls next to the higher level ground. This makes a one way wall that animals can wander into your pen, and not be able to get out.
On one side of this pen, connect a second, smaller pen (3x3 to 5x5 space). Install 2 gates so you can enter this small pen, close the gate, then enter the larger pen. This forms a lock so you can exit the pen without animals getting out. it also gives another way to lead animals in from the outside without having others escape.
Later, If you have enough fencing, make a larger pen area on the 2nd elevation of land against the first pen. This enlarges your overall stockyard and gives you a mechanism to bring in more animals, without getting crowded by your existing herd.
How to lure animals into the pen.
Get some wheat and put it in your active slot
now approach some animals. There's a chance it won't work, but most animals will turn and follow you. Now lead them to the part of the fence that is adjacent to the higher land. This makes it easy to simply walk into the pen and they will follow you in.
Or, lead them to the chute you built, open the outer gate, lead them inside, close the outer gate, then open the inner gate and lead them further in and close the inner gate.
change off of wheat to get them to stop following you.
Build a snowman INSIDE your pen (2 blocks of snow + pumpkin) to kill hostile mobs if they get inside
Breeding:
I haven't perfected this yet, so somebody may revise this a bit.
inside your pen, get 2 of the same kind of animals. Feed them each wheat which will activate love mode on both. hearts will ping out from them. A short moment later, a baby animal will appear.
I have not been able to get the baby animal to grow up. feeding it wheat wasn't possible. Maybe it just takes time. I had a ton of animals in my pen, so it was hard to count them.
Seperating animals:
At the moment, I have a huge mess of animals (5-6 of each kind). I reckon for breeding, it might be handy to isolate them to pairs. My proposal to solve this is a new kind of chute.
Build a long chute (1 block wide corridor, possibly with regular blocks as walls so you can attach levers). One end connects to the main stockyard, the other has an 'airlock" so you can lead the animals into the chute, and exit without them. it might take a friend to close the starting end after the chute is full so animals won't escape.
This chute chould have a gate every other block, so you can isolate animals to one per block. (levers on the outside would enable this).
Now, on the side of the chute would be gates, at each of these gaps. These would lead to the correct animal pen (once again, more chutes so you can lead them).
For convenience, you're going to want a gate on each side of the pens, maybe more, so you can exit without having to walk all around. But any gate going straight to the outside is a risk of an escapee.
Some folks have reported animals disappearing, but I have not had that problem.
thats a bummer. zero damage snowballs. otherwise, they'd be perfect....
they're not critical to the farming plan, just an extra idea.
I was also gutted about the zero dmg snow balls, but they can be used to distract the hostile mobs. Kind of.
Good job for the effort you put into your post, but in all honesty, I think most people will know how to make a farm by now.