New Farms · Sniffers · Java & Bedrock

How to Breed Sniffers

Sniffers dig up ancient seedsand you breed them with torchflower seeds to make more sniffersa renewable source of rare plants.

SNIFF → DIG → ANCIENT SEED

sniffers dig up ancient seeds

breed them with torchflower seeds

Sniffers sniff the ground and dig up torchflower and pitcher seeds. Feed two sniffers those seeds to breed an egg, hatch it, and you have a self-sustaining seed source.

What you need

A sniffer egg to start

Torchflower seeds to breed

Moss block to hatch faster

The ancient plants they find

Hatch one, then breed for seeds

Your first sniffer comes from a brushed egg in ocean ruins; hatch it on moss and let it grow. Grown sniffers dig up torchflower seeds and pitcher podsand feeding two of them those torchflower seeds makes a new egg. Hatch each egg and the herd, and your supply of ancient seeds, keeps growing.

Quick answers

What is a sniffer in Minecraft?

The sniffer is an ancient mob brought back by a community vote. It snuffles around and digs up long-lost seeds, the torchflower and pitcher plant, that you cannot find any other way. Breeding sniffers gives you a renewable source of those rare seeds.

How do you get your first sniffer?

You hatch one. Brush suspicious sand in a warm ocean ruin to find a sniffer egg, then place the egg on the ground to hatch it into a baby sniffer. Put it on a moss block and it hatches much faster.

How do you breed sniffers?

Feed two adult sniffers torchflower seeds and they enter love mode, but instead of a live baby they produce a sniffer egg. Pick up that egg, hatch it like the first one, and your herd grows from there.

What do sniffers dig up?

As a sniffer wanders valid ground like dirt, grass or moss, it occasionally sniffs, digs, and drops a torchflower seed or a pitcher pod. Those are the only way to get the ancient plants, so a few sniffers keep you stocked.

Where do the first torchflower seeds come from?

From the sniffer itself. Your first sniffer egg comes from brushing suspicious sand, and once it grows up its digging gives you the seeds, both to plant and to breed more sniffers with.

Does sniffer breeding work on Bedrock?

Yes. Sniffers hatch from eggs, breed with torchflower seeds into more eggs, and dig up ancient seeds the same way on both editions, with only minor behaviour differences.

Database →

The sniffer mob

Look up the sniffer, its eggs and the seeds it digs up.

Guide →

Villager crop farm

Plant the ancient seeds and let a farmer tend the rest.

Breeding a mob you cannot find in the wild

There is no wild sniffer to catch

Sniffers only exist because a player hatched one, which makes them the one mob whose population starts at zero in every world. That is why the first two eggs matter so much: until you have two adults, there is nothing to breed and the only source is more suspicious sand in an ocean ruin.

Torchflower seeds are both the reward and the fuel

Adult sniffers dig up seeds, and torchflower seeds are what puts two of them into love mode. Once you have a pair the loop closes on itself, because the digging feeds the breeding, but the very first pair has to be fed with seeds you dug up by hand from the first sniffer you hatched.

The egg takes real time

A sniffer egg needs a long time to hatch and hatches faster on moss. Standing next to it does nothing, so place the egg on moss near your base and let it run while you do something else instead of watching it, and keep the area lit so nothing wanders in while the baby is defenceless.