Hay Bale — Minecraft block

Overview

Hay Bale is a building block in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. Hay Bale has a crafting recipe, so it is renewable as long as you can source its ingredients. With a hardness of 0.5 it gives way immediately under almost any tool.

Any tool works, and so do bare hands. Mining it returns the block itself, so it is safe to relocate. A blast resistance of 0.5 means a single creeper will clear it away.

It stacks to 64. You make it with Wheat. The one thing it makes is Target.

How long it takes to break

At a hardness of 0.5, Hay Bale takes 0.75 seconds to punch out and 0.1 seconds with a netherite-tier tool of the correct class.

You are looking at 0.15 seconds on iron and 0.1 on diamond — the diamond step is where the time actually falls.

The drop does not depend on the tool — bare hands work as well as anything — so the table below is purely about speed.

Efficiency adds its level squared plus one to the tool speed, so Efficiency V is about 2 times faster than the same tool unenchanted.

Tool	No enchantment	Efficiency III	Efficiency V
Hand	0.75 s	0.75 s	0.75 s
Wooden	0.4 s	0.1 s	instant
Stone	0.2 s	0.1 s	instant
Iron	0.15 s	instant	instant
Diamond	0.1 s	instant	instant
Netherite	0.1 s	instant	instant
Golden	0.1 s	instant	instant

Properties

Blast resistance on Hay Bale is 0.5, so any explosion nearby takes it out. It stops light entirely and gives off no light. 64 fit in a slot — a full stack. Flammable, at encouragement 60 and burn 20: build with it away from lava, and do not use it as a wall you care about. A hoe is fastest here; any other class mines it at bare-hand speed, because the bonus only applies to the class the block is tagged for.

Transparent: No
Required tool: Any
Flammable: Yes (60/20)