Minecraft wiki entry for Time-saving_tips, associated text: Avoid killing sheep for their wool. You get more wool if you shear them instead. If you're really using a lot of colored wool, you can dye sheep in the colors you use a lot... but keep the others white, for easy stacking and sale of your surplus wool. Instead of keeping a complete rainbow flock and stocks of 16 kinds of wool, just stock the dyes. Then if you sometimes need a little wool in other colors, you can dye batches manually—all the dyes are fairly easy to get hands on in decent quantity.