Breeding horses in Minecraft is an essential skill for any player who relies on these magnificent creatures for fast and efficient land travel. By combining the best traits of two adult horses, you can create an incredible baby horse with enhanced speed, jump height, and health. This guide will walk you through every step, from taming your chosen pair of wild horses to raising a powerful new foal for your stable.
Horses are one of the most useful mobs in Minecraft, offering a significant advantage in exploring the vast open world. They allow for faster travel than walking, the ability to clear fences, and efficient traversal over difficult terrain. Each naturally spawned horse possesses unique hidden stats for speed, jump height, and health, which can only be assessed and improved through taming and breeding.
Step 1: Finding and Taming Your Horses
The foundation of any successful breeding program begins with selecting and taming two adult horses. It’s crucial to remember that wild horses cannot be bred; they must first be tamed.
Locating Horses in Minecraft
Horses naturally appear in open biomes such as plains and savannas, often in herds of around four, alongside donkeys and mules. Take your time to explore and choose two horses with desirable colors and markings before commencing the taming process. Since horses are passive mobs, they pose no threat during this stage.
The Taming Process
Taming a horse is a straightforward, albeit patient, endeavor applicable to all Minecraft editions.
- Approach an untamed horse.
- Right-click on the horse to attempt to ride it.
- The horse will likely buck you off initially. Repeat this process until the horse stops rearing and displays heart particles above its head, signifying it is tamed.
Once you see the hearts, the horse is successfully domesticated and considered yours. While tamed horses won’t wander off, they also won’t follow you. It’s recommended to secure them in an animal pen or at your base.
Step 2: Equipping Your Horses
A tamed horse is rideable, but its true utility is unlocked with the addition of a saddle, which grants control, and horse armor for protection.
Saddling Your Horse
To equip a saddle:
- Mount your tamed horse.
- Open your inventory, which will also display the horse’s inventory slots, including dedicated spaces for a saddle and horse armor.
- Place the saddle in its designated slot.
Riding and Controlling Your Horse
With a saddle equipped, you can now steer your horse.
- Right-click on the saddled horse to mount it.
- Use the standard WASD keys for movement. The horse’s inherent speed and jump capabilities are determined by its hidden stats.
To dismount, simply press the left Shift key. Exercise caution to avoid riding your horse into tight spaces where its head might intersect with solid blocks, or where it might fall from a significant height.
Equipping Horse Armor
Horse armor provides essential defense, increasing the horse’s health and protection against attacks, particularly vital for rides in dangerous territories.
- Mount the tamed horse and open its inventory.
- Place the horse armor into the designated slot. Horse armor can be crafted from leather, iron, gold, or diamond.
Step 3: Feeding and Healing Horses
Feeding horses serves a dual purpose: healing them when injured and preparing them for the breeding process. Note that not all food items fulfill both functions.
Horse Food Items
Horses accept a variety of food items. However, specific items are required for breeding and accelerating foal growth.
- Hay Bales: The most efficient food for healing an adult horse’s health.
- Golden Carrots: One of the two primary food items required to initiate horse breeding.
- Golden Apples: The other primary food item that triggers the breeding state.
Healing Damaged Horses
To restore a horse’s health, which can be viewed on its health bar while mounted:
- Feed the horse hay bales or golden carrots for rapid healing.
- Golden apples and enchanted golden apples also provide instant healing.
- Feeding inappropriate items will not restore health.
Step 4: Breeding Your Horses
This is the ultimate goal of your preparation. Once you have two healthy, tamed adult horses, you are ready to begin the breeding process to obtain a horse foal. Breeding is the sole method to potentially improve your horses’ hidden stats, increasing your chances of acquiring a horse with maximum speed.
The Breeding Process
The breeding mechanics are consistent across Java and Bedrock editions. Ensure your two tamed horses are in close proximity, ideally within an animal pen.
- Feed one horse a golden carrot or golden apple to activate “love mode,” indicated by heart particles. You will need to do this for both parent horses.
- Once both horses are in love mode, they will move towards each other, and a baby horse foal will spawn.
The mating process initiates immediately after both parent horses display hearts. The resulting foal inherits a combination of the parents’ stats, along with a random element, offering the possibility of superior traits.
Accelerating Foal Growth
While horses can only breed every five minutes, the growth of the resulting foal can be significantly sped up:
- Golden carrots are the most efficient food for rapidly reducing a baby horse’s growth time.
- Hay bales can also accelerate growth, though they are less effective than golden carrots. Hay bales are better suited for general healing and feeding.
Breeding Horses and Donkeys for Mules
A unique outcome of cross-breeding is the mule, a sterile hybrid produced by mating a horse with a donkey. Mules are valuable for their ability to carry chests.
- Activate love mode in both a horse and a donkey by feeding them either golden carrots or golden apples.
- The resulting mule will inherit a mix of the parents’ stats, making it an excellent pack animal.
Special Minecraft Horses
Beyond the standard horse mobs, Minecraft features rare, special horse variants that cannot be bred but offer unique advantages. These undead horse entities require different methods of acquisition.
Obtaining a Skeleton Horse
Skeleton horses are among the coolest and easiest special horses to acquire, as they are automatically tamed upon spawning. This variant cannot be tamed conventionally or bred. Instead, it appears during a thunderstorm event known as a Skeleton Trap. When a horse is struck by lightning, it transforms into an undead horse already tamed by the game. You can ride a skeleton horse immediately, provided you equip it with a saddle for control.
Taming a Skeleton Horse
As skeleton horses spawn pre-tamed from the Skeleton Trap event, they are immediately available to the first player who mounts them. Simply right-click to ride, and then equip a saddle for full control.
Obtaining a Zombie Horse
Zombie horses are exceedingly rare and do not spawn naturally in Survival Mode. This unique undead mob is primarily used for decorative purposes or in custom map creation. A Zombie horse can only be obtained via commands and cannot be tamed or ridden in the standard gameplay loop.
Taming a Zombie Horse
Zombie horses cannot be tamed through feeding or the conventional taming process. As they are intended as static, decorative mobs, they are not designed for ridden gameplay in Survival Mode. If you wish to utilize them for riding, command manipulation is necessary.
Conclusion
Mastering horse breeding in Minecraft involves carefully taming two adult horses, ensuring their health with appropriate food, and then initiating love mode with golden carrots or apples. This process yields a foal whose stats may surpass those of its parents, ultimately enhancing your exploration capabilities. Remember that feeding golden carrots frequently is the quickest way to speed up your baby horse’s growth. With this knowledge, you can cultivate a stable of high-performance horses, revolutionizing your travel and exploration across the Minecraft world.
