How to breed horses in Minecraft
Horses make handy companions in Minecraft, with a string of benefits that justify the time taken to breed them. Not only are they a source of EXP and materials, but they can also be utilised to enhance your explorations in Minecraft.
Minecraft horses not only increase your movement speed, but their strong legs can propel you up to new areas that would otherwise remain out of reach. If you want to make the most of Minecraft horses, you’ll need to know a few things. What do horses eat in Minecraft? And how do you breed Minecraft horses?
We’ve got all the answers right here. Below is our full guide of how to breed horses in Minecraft, answering these questions and more.
Where to find horses in Minecraft
Horses are pretty common in Minecraft. They generally spawn in plains and savanna biomes, coming in herds of up to 6 at a time.
They can also appear in villages, where they may turn up inside animal pens or stables.
They are a passive mob who will not cause you any trouble when you stumble upon them. If you find one, you can lure them wherever you want with food or a lead.
What do horses eat in Minecraft?
Horses have a varied diet, and eat many different foods. These foods, and their effects are as follows:
Sugar
- Heals 0.5 Hearts
- Increases Temper by 3
- Speeds baby growth by 30 seconds
Where to find Sugar: Crafted from a single Sugar Cane (which commonly spawns near water) or a Honey Bottle will supply 3.
Wheat
- Heals 1 Heart
- Increases Temper by 3
- Speeds baby growth by 20 seconds
Where to find Wheat: Harvest fully-grown wheat crops or commonly found in many chests
Apple
- Heals 1.5 Hearts
- Increases Temper by 3
- Speeds baby growth by 1 minute
Where to find Apples: Commonly found in many treasure chests, can be found by breaking leaves from chopped oak tress or obtaining by trading with villagers.
Golden Carrot
- Heals 2 Hearts
- Increases Temper by 5
- Speeds baby growth by 1 minute
- Horse enters Love Mode
Where to find Golden Carrot: Crafted from 8 Golden Nuggets and 1 Carrot (place the Carrot in the middle and the Golden Nuggets all around it as per the above picture). Can also rarely be found in chests, with your best chance coming in an Ancient City Ice Box Chest at 54.9% spawn rate. You can also sometimes trade them for Emeralds with master-level farmers.
Golden Apple
- Heals 5 Hearts
- Increases Temper by 10
- Speeds baby growth by 4 minutes
- Horse enters Love Mode
Where to find Golden Apple: Crafted from 8 Golden Ingots and 1 Apple (place the Apple in the middle and the Golden Ingots all around it as per the above picture). Also can be found from chests but these are fairly uncommon except for Igloo chests.
Hay Bale
- Heals 10 Hearts
- Speeds baby growth by 3 minutes
Where to find Hay Bale: Crafted from 9 Wheat. Fill the whole 3 x 3 grid with your Wheat.
Horses actually have an animation that suggests they are eating grass, but this is purely cosmetic. They do not consume the grass and it has no effect on them.
NOTE: Food makes no difference to a horse’s maximum health, speed or jump height.
How to tame horses in Minecraft
It is important to tame a horse because you cannot breed horses until they are tamed. It will also be impossible to ride a horse effectively without taming it first. The situation is actually a little complicated.
In Minecraft, a horse is tamed by feeding it food to increase its temper stat to its required taming threshold.
How exactly does this work? When a horse spawns, Minecraft allocates it a random temper threshold between 0-99, which must be hit for it to be tamed. It is impossible to know what the taming threshold is without simple trial and error.
Once the horse has been fed enough food for it to reach this random, secret taming threshold, you should mount the horse. If you get on after reaching the threshold, the horse will immediately be tamed. If not, it will throw you off but handily bump its temper score up by 5 points.
Here’s a step by step breakdown:
- Feed a horse some food to increase its temper
- Get on and see if it is tamed
- If you are thrown off, feed it some more food and try again
- Get on the horse after every single piece of food fed, because this gives a free 5 point temper bonus that saves wasting food
- When the horse emits some hearts and your hunger meter is replaced on the screen by the horse’s meter, this means it is tamed
- NOTE: After taming a horse, you will still need to equip it with a Saddle in order to control it whilst riding
If you have a lot of sugar, wheat and apples I would suggest using these first because Golden Apples and Golden Carrots will be needed later for breeding.
How to breed horses in Minecraft
Like other animals in Minecraft, horses can be bred by feeding them specific food. In this case, it’s either a Golden Apple or Golden Carrot.
Remember the horses have to be tamed in order for them to breed.
Here are the step by step instructions of how to breed horses in Minecraft:
- Tame two horses by feeding them enough food to hit their temper threshold and mounting them both.
- Make sure the two horses are relatively close to each other by keeping them in a container or leading them to the same area. You can also tether them to a fence with leads.
- Feed one of the horses a Golden Apple or Golden Carrot, which will cause it to enter love mode.
- Within 30 seconds, feed another nearby tamed horse a Golden Apple or Golden Carrot and this will enter love mode as well. You don’t need to feed the horses the same food.
- The two horses will go close to each other, causing a shower of red hearts before a baby horse (a foal) will appear!
Like most animals, there is a cooldown period of 5 minutes before the same horses can breed again, and the foal will take 20 minutes to grow into an adult horse. However, this period can be sped up by feeding the baby the foods we listed above, which will increase the growth rate.
Finally, it’s worth noting that a horse and a donkey can actually breed together to create a Mule. Mules generally have the same benefits as horses, but they cannot breed so you are better off sticking to horse breeding.
What are the benefits of horses?
Horses come with a fairly large number of benefits, making it a very worthwhile endeavour to create a horse farm. Horses can assist in the following ways:
- Tamed horses can be saddled and ridden for increased speed and jumping height. Horses can potentially travel around 3 times faster than the player, and jump as much as 5 times higher! The speed, health and jump ability of horses is all randomised for and cannot be increased once a horse has spawned in the world.
- Horses yield a standard 0-2 Leather when killed, and this can be as high as 5 Leather with Looting III. Leather is massively important for crafting books, which in turn greatly assist with Enchanting.
- Horses provide 1-3 EXP when killed, or 1-7 EXP when bred, which is always welcome
- Their defense can be bolstered with Horse Armor, making them more resilient to hostile mob attacks
There is also a wide range of different horse colours, with 7 possible base colours and 5 possible markings, resulting in a possible 35 different horse designs. The colour of your horse doesn’t make any difference, but you can always attempt to pursue the colour of your choice.
However, it is definitely worth keeping hold of a horse that has high health (up to a maximum of 30 hearts), high movement speed and a high jumping ability. Since all of these stats are completely random, keep trying until you breed a horse you can keep for life!
That’s everything you need to know about Minecraft horses, including what do horses eat in Minecraft and a full explanation of how to breed Minecraft horses. For more Minecraft tips, check out the articles below:
