A moon cow is a variant of a cow, exclusive to the 23w13a_or_b snapshot, that spawns on the Moon. They function similar to the cow, except they walk backward and wear glass.
Spawning
Moon cows spawn on the surface of cheese blocks on the Moon in groups of 1-5.
Drops
An adult moon cow drops:
- 1-3
glass bottles, average of 2. - 0-2
cheese, average of 1. - 0-1
bones, 50%. - 0-1
glass, 10%. Glass can drop only on a player kill.
Killing a baby moon cow yields no items and no experience drop.
Behavior
Breeding
A moon cow follows a player who holds wheat but stops following if separated from the player by at least six blocks. Adult moon cows enter love mode and pair off to create calves after they are given wheat, granting the player 1–7 experience orbs. The parent cows have a cooldown of five minutes before they can breed again. The growth of calves can be accelerated using wheat; each use reduces the remaining growth duration by 10%.
Baby moon cows take 20 minutes to grow and follow adult cows, preferring them instead of a player holding wheat. The baby moon cow that results from breeding attempts to go to the nearest available block to its parent, even if no path can be found. A baby moon cow pathfinds to other adult cows if it is separated from its parent by more than 24 blocks. Normal calves also follow moon cows, but moon calves do not follow normal cows.
Balloons
Like regular cows, moon cows can be fed air to turn them into balloon cows and go back to the Earth. The glass bottles dropped by them allow the player to craft new air if they run out of it. After reaching Y=689, the cow explodes with a firework blast and gives the player Nausea II and Levitation II for 20 seconds.
Sounds
Moon cows use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.
| Sounds | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sound | Closed captions | Source | Description | Identifier | Translation key | Volume | Pitch | Attenuation distance |
| Cow moos | Friendly Mobs | Randomly | entity | subtitles | 0.4 | 0.8–1.2 (Baby: 1.3–1.7) | 16 | |
| Cow dies | Friendly Mobs | When a moon cow dies | entity | subtitles | 0.4 | 0.8–1.2 (Baby: 1.3–1.7) | 16 | |
| Cow hurts | Friendly Mobs | When a moon cow is damaged | entity | subtitles | 0.4 | 0.8–1.2 (Baby: 1.3–1.7) | 16 | |
| Cow gets milked | Players | When a moon cow is milked | entity | subtitles | 1.0 | 1.0 | 16 | |
| Footsteps | Friendly Mobs | While a moon cow is walking | entity | subtitles | 0.15 | 1.0 | 16 | |
Data values
ID
| Name | Identifier | Translation key |
|---|---|---|
 Moon Cow | moon_cow |
entity |
Issues
Issues relating to "Moon Cow" are not maintained on the bug tracker because it is an April Fools' joke, and is therefore not in the newest stable version or snapshot. Issues reported there are closed as "Invalid".
Trivia
- Moon cows walking backward is a reference to the dance move moonwalk, where through a visual trick a dancer appears to walk backward.
- Moon cows have their own spawn egg, but they are only obtainable through commands or the
spawn_egg_chanceVote. - Moon cows are unable to breed when the condition that allows craftable air blocks is enabled, as they are mounted instead of fed when right clicked with wheat.
