Minecraft has been slowly adding more detail and depth to the Overworld in the past few updates, but Spring to Life upped the ante by giving ive mobs like cows, chickens, and pigs special biome-specific textures, as well as detailed natural features like falling leaves and firefly bushes for lusher natural environments. Unfortunately, an important ive mob, the sheep, was left out of the texture overhaul despite needing an update more than any other farm animal mob.

Sheep have been a Minecraft staple for years, as the ive mob provides both food and resources for building and crafting. Despite their status as one of the most useful animals in the game, sheep were ignored in the recent update’s texture changes. In fact, sheep haven’t had a significant update in years. They’ve remained static with the same limited number of colors and an unchanged texture. More than any other mob in the game, sheep deserve new textures and an overall overhaul.

Every Farm Animal Mob In Minecraft Was Updated, Except Sheep

Chickens, Cows, And Pigs All Received New Textures

Spring to Life, the latest update for Minecraft, gave (most of) the farm animal mobs of the game and some special items, like spawn eggs, a massive glow-up. Pigs, chickens, and cows all received special new textures depending on the biome they spawn in. Cold biomes like snowy plains, windswept hills, and taiga will now have furrier livestock, while warm biomes like jungle, savanna, and badlands will spawn livestock more prepared for the heat.

These new textures are inspired by real-life animal breeds. The cold biome cow seems to be modeled after the Highland Cattle of Scotland, and the warm biome pig is likely modeled after the Red River Hog of Africa. These new textures add a lot to the game, as the more unique animals will help make every biome even more distinct, which makes exploring every new seed feel more worthwhile.

The one common farm animal that did not receive a substantial change or any new textures in the Spring to Life update was the sheep. Rather than getting multiple new textures to fit varying biome climates, sheep were just given more standard wool color spawning depending on the area. Now, white sheep will more commonly spawn in temperate biomes, while brown sheep will spawn in warmer ones, and black sheep in colder ones.

This lack of an update is very disappointing, especially since the colors chosen for each biome aren’t particularly rare or exciting. This token change may make it a little easier to get brown wool without having to find cocoa beans, but it doesn’t give sheep nearly the same attention as pigs, cows, and chickens.

Sheep Provide More Than Any Other Mob

The ive Livestock Gives Food And Crafting Materials

Sheep are one of the most useful mobs in the Overworld, especially when players are starting a fresh world. They can provide both wool and mutton, offering an incredibly useful building block and a steady supply of food if necessary. Sheep are even some of the most diverse mobs in of building, as they alone provide building blocks in 16 different colors with minimal effort from the player.

Other colored blocks, like terracotta, require a lot of clay and a fair amount of dye, as every eight blocks of terracotta require one piece of dye. When dyeing sheep, players need only gather the base color dyes (red, blue, green, and yellow) and breed sheep together for different colors like cyan, lime, and magenta, which makes them an economical source of colorful building blocks.

Cows, sheep, and pigs are all useful but not nearly as much as sheep. Most of them only provide meat and ingredients for other foods, like eggs and milk for making cake. Cows do give players buckets of milk, which are very useful in certain circumstances against potions, but that resource isn’t nearly as versatile as wool is for various crafting recipes. Simply put, sheep are the best Overworld mob in of utility, so it doesn’t make sense why they’re being ignored in the Spring to Life update.

Minecraft Needs To Overhaul Sheep and Their Wool

New Textures and Colors Are Long Overdue

Of all the mobs in Minecraft, sheep have been the most neglected. This is especially egregious considering how players interact with sheep for food or wool on almost a daily basis. Other mobs don’t always receive a lot of attention from Mojang, like squids or silverfish, but they aren’t nearly as ubiquitous in the day-to-day gameplay of Minecraft. With every other farm animal mob in the game getting special textures, it’s a no-brainer that sheep should receive similar treatment.

Like cows, pigs, and chickens, new warm and cold textures for sheep could be based on real-life breed variants from around the world. The current model of Minecraft sheep seems to be based on the Merino, the most common breed in the world, but there are plenty of cute breeds to pull inspiration from for other biome climates.

Picking different breeds with distinct features, like with the new cow textures, could help make sheep a more interesting mob to collect. For the cold biomes, Minecraft could use the Valais Blacknose, an adorable but hardy breed of sheep known for their black noses, ears, and feet.

Alternatively, Minecraft could take inspiration from the Dorset, a breed from England that has prominent horns, which would make for a more visually interesting variant of sheep. For warmer biomes, Gulf Coast Native sheep could work, as they are a common breed in warmer parts of the world, but they don’t have much visual distinction from the basic white Minecraft sheep.

The last new dye colors were added in Minecraft Java Edition Beta 1.2, released in January 2011.

After giving sheep a texture overhaul, there’s one other detail that should be updated: wool colors. Minecraft hasn’t introduced new shades of wool since 2011, though the existing colors have been slightly modified in their shades over the years. As Minecraft adds more and more intricate blocks, like glazed terracotta with its own detailed patterns, there should also be more different dyes to use on sheep. Even more color combinations with existing dye to create alternate shades would add a lot to the game, though it would make the existing dyeing mechanic slightly more complicated in Minecraft.