
Milky Way
Adds a little patience to farming: milking mobs now triggers a configurable cooldown.
Screenshots

About this Mod
Overview
With this mod, certain resources offered by mobs such as cows and mooshrooms now rely on a cooldown. By default, this means cows can be milked with a bucket roughly twice a day (as opposed to one animal giving infinite and instantaneous milk). This duration is configurable. Other resources, such as harvesting mushroom stew from mooshrooms, are also dependent on a cooldown.
The mod offers some additional challenge on its own, but it's mainly meant to encourage the use of alternative milk farms. Or maybe improved organization in cow pens?
Got Alternative Milk?
Why yes! Here are a few (1.19.2) mods off the top of my head:
- Neapolitan: Although this mod primarily focuses on other crops and food-related mechanics, it adds the ability to farm milk out of cauldrons by placing cows over dripstone, similarly to water/lava. The output is slow, but it does allow for extra free milk.
- Simple Soy: Silly stigmas aside, this mod provides a vegan alternative in the form of soy milk, using the mod's titular crop.
Note: I'm not affiliated with either of these mods; I just think the options they provide are neat and under-utilized :)
Config
By default, mobs that are still on a cooldown will spawn a particle to indicate they're not ready to any impatient players. This can be disabled by setting angryParticle to false.
In the config, the values bucketTimer, worseBucketTimer, bowlTimer, and bottleTimer all correspond to the cooldown (in seconds) of the four types of milkable mobs, detailed below:
Entity Type Tags
There are four entity type tags: milky_way:bucket_milkable, milky_way:worse_bucket_milkable, milky_way:bowl_milkable, and milky_way:bottle_milkable.
- By default, mobs like cows are put into
bucket_milkable, and mobs that would provide worse alternatives (such as mooshrooms or yak from Environmental are put intoworse_bucket_milkable.- By default, a mob in
worse_bucket_milkablehas a full-day cooldown, whereas mobs inbucket_milkableonly take half as long.
- By default, a mob in
- Putting a mob in both
bucket_milkableandworse_bucket_milkablemay have terrible consequences!! (I wouldn't know because I haven't tried, it's just that scary.)- Other overlaps like
bowl_milkableandbucket_milkableare fine, though. For example, cows can configured to be milked with bottles using Neapolitan so they're put in bothbucket_milkableandbottle_milkable.
- Other overlaps like
If Cobblemon is installed, mobs that are milkable (only Miltank in the base mod) are put in the same boat as standard bucket-milkable mobs.
Item Tags
The item tag milky_way:buckets lets this mod maintain compatibility with mods that add alternative buckets, like Caverns and Chasms and their golden buckets.
Requires Blueprint 6.2.0+. Various optional dependencies are also built-in.
I know that there could be other mods that add their own fluids to cows, so feel free to extend suggestions and incompatibilities in the issue tracker. Thank you!
Available Versions
How to Install Milky Way on Your Server
Order Server
Order a Minecraft Java server with at least 3 GB RAM (4 GB recommended).
Set forge Loader
In the panel under "Egg", select the forge loader and matching Minecraft version (1.21.1).
Install Mod
Open the mod browser in the dashboard and search for "Milky Way". Click "Install" – done! Alternatively, upload the .jar via SFTP to the /mods folder.
Compatibility
Mod Loaders
Minecraft Versions
1.21.1, 1.20.1, 1.19.2
Server-side
✓ RequiredRecommended RAM
4 GB(min. 3 GB)Frequently Asked Questions
Milky Way server crashes on startup – what to do?
Most common cause: wrong forge version or insufficient RAM. Check the server log (latest.log) for "OutOfMemoryError" or "Mixin" errors. With Mado Hosting: ensure at least 3 GB RAM is allocated and the loader matches the mod version (1.21.1). You can switch loaders with one click in the panel.
Is Milky Way compatible with forge and neoforge?
Milky Way officially supports forge, neoforge for Minecraft 1.21.1, 1.20.1, 1.19.2. The Mado dashboard automatically detects incompatible loader combinations.
Server lagging with Milky Way – how to optimize performance?
Recommended RAM: 4 GB (per 8 players). Use /spark profiler to check if Milky Way consumes the most tick time. Common fixes: reduce server view-distance to 8-10, install "performant" or "starlight" as supplementary mods on Forge. With Mado Hosting, your server runs on NVMe SSDs with dedicated CPU cores for minimal latency.
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Rent Modded Server
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