Taming & Breeding in Valheim: Every Species, Time and Population Limit
Taming a creature in Valheim takes 600 progress ticks at one every three seconds — thirty minutes — and only three food items if nothing interrupts it. Breeding after that runs on a different clock entirely, with love points, population caps and grow times that decide how fast a farm actually scales. Most guides tell you what to feed a boar; this one gives you the numbers you need to plan a pen that keeps producing.
On sourcing. Iron Gate do not publish exact system documentation. The figures below come from the community wikis and can change with any patch.
What Can Be Tamed, and What It Eats
| Creature | Food | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Boar | Blueberries, Carrot, Onion, Raspberries, Red Mushroom, Turnip | 1 m |
| Wolf | Boar Meat, Deer Meat, Lox Meat Pie, Neck Tail, Raw Fish, Sausages | 1.4 m |
| Lox | Barley Flour, Cloudberries, Flax | 4 m |
| Hen | Seeds, Barley Flour, Dandelion | 1 m |
| Asksvin | Smoke Puff, Vineberry Cluster, Fiddlehead | 4 m |
Chickens and Hens are the exception — they hatch already tamed from eggs, so there is no taming process for them at all.
Note the range column. Boars, Wolves and Hens need food placed within 1 to 1.4 metres, which means dropping it practically at their feet. Lox and Asksvin accept food from 4 metres, which is just as well given what a Lox does to an unarmoured player.
The Taming Process
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticks required | 600 |
| Tick interval | every 3 seconds |
| Total time | ~30 minutes |
| With Brew of Animal Whispers | 15 minutes |
| Food items needed | 3, if uninterrupted |
| A feeding lasts | 10 minutes |
The creature must not be hungry, alerted or fleeing for a tick to count. That is the whole difficulty: an alerted boar makes no progress, so the standard method is to trap it behind a fence or in a pit first, drop food, and walk away.
Yellow hearts mean it is working. If you are not seeing them, the animal is alerted — usually because you are standing too close.
The Brew of Animal Whispers halves the whole thing to 15 minutes, which is the single biggest quality-of-life item in the taming process and worth brewing before a Lox or Asksvin attempt.
Only three food items are needed across the full thirty minutes, since each feeding keeps the creature fed for 10 minutes. Dumping a stack in the pen is unnecessary.
Breeding Numbers
Breeding is checked every 30 seconds, and each check has a 33% chance to award a love point.
| Creature | Love points | Population limit | Partner range | Pregnancy | Grow time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boar | 3 | 5 | 3 m | 1 min | 50 min |
| Wolf | 3 | 4 | 3 m | 1 min | 50 min |
| Lox | 4 | 4 | 8 m | 2 min | 100 min |
| Hen | 3 | 10 | 4 m | 1 min | 50 min |
| Asksvin | 3 | 10 | 4 m | 1 min | 50 min |
For a pair to breed, all of the following must hold: neither is hungry, neither is alerted, the population is below the species limit, and a compatible partner is within range.
The population limit is the number that shapes your pen. Boars cap at 5 and Wolves at 4, so a wolf pen is never going to be a factory — while Hens and Asksvins cap at 10, which makes them the species worth building for volume.
Lox are slow on every axis: 4 love points instead of 3, a 2-minute pregnancy, and a 100-minute grow time, double everything else.
"Not hungry" is the condition that quietly stops farms. A pen you stopped visiting stops breeding, because the animals are hungry rather than because anything is broken.
What You Actually Get
Offspring inherit stars from the birthing parent. That single rule is the whole reason to run a breeding pen rather than tame repeatedly: catch one two-star animal and you can multiply it, and star levels meaningfully change a creature's stats.
Young are born tamed and cannot be interacted with until adult — no renaming, no commands, no petting. They also grow while you are asleep or away, so a farm genuinely runs on real time rather than on your attention.
What breeding produces beyond more animals:
- Lox — 1 Lox Meat Pie per breeding.
- Hen — 1 Feathers per breeding.
- Boar, Wolf and Asksvin — no direct drop.
Tamed animals also change faction to the player, meaning they will not attack your other tamed creatures, and they regenerate health passively when fed.
Wolves respond to stay and follow commands, and Lox can be ridden with a saddle — which for a lot of players is the actual reason to tame one.
How to Run a Breeding Pen
- Trap the animal first. A fence or a pit removes the "alerted" problem entirely.
- Brew the Brew of Animal Whispers if you are taming a Lox or Asksvin — it halves 30 minutes to 15.
- Drop three food items, not a stack. Each feeding covers 10 minutes.
- Tame two, then check the population limit for that species before expanding the pen.
- Keep food in the pen permanently. Hungry animals do not breed.
- Breed from your best-starred animal, since offspring inherit from the birthing parent.
- Leave it running. Young grow while you are offline.
Practical tips
- 600 ticks at one per 3 seconds — 30 minutes, or 15 with Brew of Animal Whispers.
- Only 3 food items are needed; a feeding lasts 10 minutes.
- Trap first. An alerted creature makes zero progress.
- Population caps are small — Boar 5, Wolf 4, Lox 4 — but Hen and Asksvin reach 10.
- Stars are inherited from the birthing parent. Breed from your best animal.
- Lox take twice as long at every stage: 4 love points, 2-minute pregnancy, 100-minute grow.
Running your own Valheim server
Breeding runs on wall-clock time — 50-minute grow times, 30-second breeding checks and animals that only progress while the world is loaded. On a single-player save none of that happens while you are away. A gamever Valheim server keeps the pen running around the clock for up to 10 players, so a farm actually compounds between sessions instead of pausing. One-click backups protect a two-star breeding line, and automatic updates keep client and server aligned.
Conclusion
Taming in Valheim takes 600 ticks at one every 3 seconds — about 30 minutes, halved to 15 with the Brew of Animal Whispers, and needs only 3 food items because each feeding lasts 10 minutes. The creature must not be hungry, alerted or fleeing, which is why trapping it first is standard. Five species can be tamed — Boar, Wolf, Lox, Hen and Asksvin — while Chickens and Hens hatch already tamed. Breeding is checked every 30 seconds with a 33% chance of a love point, needs 3 points (4 for Lox), and is capped by species: Boar 5, Wolf 4, Lox 4, Hen 10, Asksvin 10. Grow times run 50 minutes, or 100 for Lox. The rule that makes a pen worth building is that offspring inherit stars from the birthing parent — so tame one good animal and multiply it, and let it run while you are away.
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