Bone

Overview

Bones are the raw form of Bone Meal — one bone makes three — and bone meal is the fertiliser that turns a slow farm into a fast one. They also tame wolves: feed bones to a wild wolf until hearts appear and it becomes a dog that follows you, fights for you and can now wear Wolf Armor. Every skeleton drops 0 to 2 bones and strays and wither skeletons drop them too, so any night above ground or any cave trip produces them in quantity, and a skeleton spawner farm produces them by the thousand. Nine bones make a Bone Block, which is a fine pale building material and the compact way to store a surplus, and bone blocks are also what fossils in the Overworld are made of. For anyone running crops, the practical routine is to keep a stack of bone meal in the farm chest and a stack of bones in the storage room, converting as needed rather than crafting everything at once. Between the crops and the dogs, no cave trip ever comes home with too many.

Making bone meal for farming, taming wolves into dogs, and — as bone blocks — a pale building material that stores a surplus compactly. Three separate systems from one common drop.

Bone is a crafting material item in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot. You get it by killing Bogged, Skeleton, Skeleton Horse, Stray and 1 more.

Its only crafting use is Bone Meal.

How to get it

Kill skeletons, strays or wither skeletons for 0 to 2 bones each, up to 5 with Looting III. 1 bone crafts into 3 bone meal, and 9 bones compress into 1 bone block.

Tips

Tame wolves with bones rather than meat; only bones work, and it usually takes several per wolf.
One bone is three bone meal, so a stack of bones is 192 applications of fertiliser.
A skeleton spawner walled into a farm supplies bones, arrows and experience from one build.
Bone blocks make good pale pillars and beams, and they are the cheapest way to store hundreds of bones.