How to Get a Goat Horn in Minecraft: A Complete Guide

The Minecraft 1.17 Caves & Cliffs: Part I introduced players to a new mob – goats. However, goats weren’t really unique as they only provided milk for players, which could also be done by cows. The only difference is that goats are more aggressive and will attack players.

In the 1.19 The Wild Update, the Minecraft game developers introduced a new mob drop for goats. The goat horn, which was only obtainable from goats, gave players a new way to communicate with other players and created a fun and new experience. This guide will teach you the easiest way on how you can obtain a goat horn and the different goat horn variants.

Goats

To find a goat horn, you will need to venture throughout the world and find a goat. Goats spawn in cold-weather mountain biomes such as:

• Snowy slopes
• Jagged peaks
• Frozen peaks

If you are trying to find a biome that gives you the highest chance of finding goats, try looking for mountains that are snow-capped at the top. Goats spawn as a group and there are generally 2-3 goats in each group.

Goats are able to give players two types of loot – milk and goat horns. There are eight variants of goat horns that goats can drop, but the types of goat horns that drop also depend on the goats you find.

Goats are friendly creatures to other creatures that aren’t standing still. However, if a mob or player is stationary, goats will get aggressive and ram the stationary entity. Every 30 to 300 seconds, a goat will attempt to ram any mob that is not moving. The only mobs that a goat will not attempt to ram are other goats.

Baby Goats

Baby goats don’t have fully developed horns, so they are unable to drop any goat horns. If you look closely at their heads, you can see that the goat horns aren’t fully grown out.

Adult Goats

Regular Goats

Regular goats are adult goats and are one type of goats that can drop mob loot. A regular goat drops four types of goat horns, the four horn variants are:

• Ponder
• Sing
• Seek
• Feel

Screaming Goats

Screaming goats are also adult goats, but they are more aggressive than the regular goats and have a lower cooldown when it comes to ramming stationary mobs. While the two types of goats look the same, you can tell that the goat is a screaming goat when it makes a louder sound than regular goats and tends to attack stationary entities more. Screaming goats also only drop four variants of goat horns:

• Admire
• Call
• Yearn
• Dream

Obtaining a Goat Horn

To obtain a goat horn, we will need to use the goat’s ramming behavior. Since a goat will attack any stationary mob or player, we can set up a system where the goat will ram into a solid block instead. When a goat hits a solid and hard block, the horns will break off, allowing us to collect a goat horn. There are only a few solid blocks that can break a goat horn off, below is a list of the only blocks that you can use:

• Stone
• Coal ore
• Copper ore
• Iron ore
• Emerald ore
• Log
• Packed ice

When a goat rams into any of these blocks, the goat’s horn breaks and can be collected. If it is any other solid block, the goat’s horn will not drop.

However, this isn’t as easy as people think, and we will need to set up a system that will give us an easier way to collect goat horns. Here are a few methods that you can use to make the process of obtaining a goat horn easier.

Large Corridors

Build a large corridor and trap yourself with the goat inside this corridor. Goats only attack players within 4-16 block range, so you must leave a lot of space between you and the goat. Make sure you also cover the top of the corridor because goats can jump 10 blocks high and escape.

Stand still at the end of the corridor and wait for the goat to attack, you can tell when the goat will attack when it lowers its head and stamps its foot. When that happens, move to the side before the goat hits you. Make sure that the blocks behind you are blocks that are capable of breaking a goat’s horns.

Armor Stands (Goat Horn Farm)

However, the process of waiting for the goat to attack and moving manually by yourself takes too long, especially since a goat attacks whenever it wants within a 5 minute period. To make things even more efficient, we can use the goat’s behavior of attacking armor stands and make a goat horn farm.

To do this, will need:

• Sticky pistons
• Pressure points
• Armor stands
• Redstone dust

Here are a few steps to build this farm.

Step #1

First build a 16×16 base that will be the place that the goats will be in. You can scale this size to however many resources you have, but make sure that the base isn’t too small or the goats will accidentally hit each other. Use whatever resource you want, as this is only to contain the goats.

Step #2

Put all of your armor stands on one side of the base. Then dig two rows of 2-block-deep holes in front of the armor stands and put the sticky pistons in the hole with the slime side up. Then place redstone dust next to each piston.

Step #3

Put the stone block – or whatever block you choose that can break off a goat’s horn – on the slime and put pressure plates in front of the stone blocks.

Step #4

Make your base into a container so that no goats can escape. Light up the base too so that no mobs can spawn.

Step #5

Make a entrance for yourself, so that you can collect the goat horns.

Step #6

Put some goats into the base and your automatic goat horn farm is now complete! The goats will attack the armor stands, hit the stone blocks, and then drop goat horns.

Go into the farm once in a while and collect the goat horns on the ground.

Pillager Outposts

Another way to obtain a goat horn is finding a pillager outpost. When you do find one, go to the top floor of the outpost. There is a 50% chance of a goat horn spawning in the chests.

Other Notes

Note #1

When a goat breaks its horn from ramming into solid blocks, it will only have one horn left. Goats can only drop up to two horns. Once both their horns break, they can no longer drop horns.

Note #2

If you want a specific goat type, you will need to breed goats. Here is the formula to breeding goats.

• Regular goats breeding with regular goats will spawn a regular goat
• Screaming goats breeding with screaming goats will spawn a screaming goat
• Regular goats breeding with screaming goats will have a 50% chance of spawning either a regular goat or a screaming goat

Note #3

A goat can only drop one type of horn. For example, if one of the horns that a goat drops is the ponder goat horn variant, the other horn will also be the ponder variant.

Each horn variant plays a different and unique sound that can be heard from up to 256 blocks far.

Note #4

If you still need help building a goat horn farm or understanding goat horns, check out this Youtube video by Eyecraftmc.