How to Breed a Horse in Minecraft Background
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How to Breed a Horse in Minecraft

Do you want to ride the fastest horse in Minecraft or get a special new color for your stable? Breeding allows you to combine the best traits from two different horses in Minecraft to create an incredible baby horse. It is an essential skill for any player who relies on

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Do you want to ride the fastest horse in Minecraft or get a special new color for your stable? Breeding allows you to combine the best traits from two different horses in Minecraft to create an incredible baby horse. It is an essential skill for any player who relies on these animals for travel and exploration in the game.

Before you can start breeding horses, you need to understand the simple steps involved. It starts with finding and taming the perfect pair of wild horse mobs and then preparing them with the correct horse food. Once you have these basics down, you can start combining the best traits to improve your future horses in Minecraft.

This guide will walk you through every step, from taming your two tamed horses all the way to welcoming your new horse foal. You will learn the exact horse food items needed to start horse breeding, how to raise the baby horse, and even how to get rare horse variants. Let us get your stable ready.

What Are Horses in Minecraft?

Horses in Minecraft are some of the most useful mobs in the game, providing fast, reliable land transportation. Unlike using a boat or Elytra, riding horses lets you explore the vast land biomes quickly, jump fences, and carry you across difficult terrain much faster than the player's normal walking speed.

Horse Minecraft

Horses spawn naturally in several biomes and come in many different colors and markings, sometimes called horse coat combinations. Every horse mob that spawns has its own unique set of hidden equine stats for speed, jump height, and health. Taming and breeding horses is the only way to check these stats and combine them to get the best horse's maximum speed.

Step 1: Find and Tame a Minecraft Horse

The journey to horse breeding begins with finding at least two strong, untamed adult horses that you want to be the parents. You cannot breed a wild horse; it must be tamed first. This requires patience, but it is a necessary first step toward getting your own fast baby horse.

How to Find Horses in Minecraft

Horses spawn naturally in large open biomes like plains and savannas. You often find a naturally spawned horse herd of about four horses together, along with donkeys and mules.

Individual horses spawn with different colors and markings, so it is a good idea to look around and choose two that you like before starting the taming process. Since horses remain passive toward the player, you do not have to worry about them attacking you.

How to Tame a Horse in Minecraft (Java, Bedrock, PC)

Taming a horse is an easy process that does not require any special food items or tools. The process is the same across Java and Bedrock game editions.

  • Approach the untamed horse entity and right-click to ride it.
  • The untamed horse will likely throw you off right away, which is called horse rearing.
  • Repeat this step until the horse stops bucking and hearts appear above its head. The horse is now tamed.

How to Befriend or Domesticate a Horse

Taming the wild horse is the same as domesticating it. Once you see the hearts, you have successfully added the horse to the list of tamed animals that belong to you.

The tamed horses will not wander away, but they will not follow you either. To keep them safe, you should lead them back to your base or animal pens and secure them.

Step 2: Equip Your Minecraft Horse

A tamed horse can be ridden, but it is not truly useful until you equip it with a saddle. The saddle gives you control, and horse armor gives it protection.

How to Put a Saddle on a Horse

How to Put a Saddle on a Horse

Putting a saddle on a horse is required for control. The saddle must be placed in a dedicated slot.

  • Mount the tamed horse and open your inventory.
  • This opens the horse's inventory, which contains a saddle slot and a horse armor slot.
  • Place the saddle into the saddle slot. You are now ready for riding horses.

How to Ride a Horse in Minecraft

Once the saddle is equipped, you can easily control the horse.

  • Right-click on the ridden saddled horse to mount it.
  • Use the normal movement keys (WASD) to steer the horse.
  • The horse's speed and jump height are determined by its hidden equine stats.

How to Control and Dismount a Horse

To dismount the horse, you simply press the left shift key.

  • You can control the horse as long as you have the saddle equipped.
  • Be careful not to ride the horse into a space where the rider's head enters a solid block, or the horse falls a large distance.

How to Put Horse Armor on a Horse

Horse armor is an essential item for any horse you plan to ride in dangerous areas. It increases the horse's health and defense against attacks.

  • Mount the tamed horse and open your inventory.
  • Place the horse armor into the horse armor slot in the horse's inventory.
  • Horse armor can be made of leather, iron, gold, or diamond.

Feed and Heal Minecraft Horses

Feeding horses serves two main purposes: healing them when they are hurt and preparing them for horse breeding. Not all horse food items work for both purposes.

How to Feed a Horse in Minecraft (apples, golden carrots, hay bales)

Horses eat a variety of items, but only a few special ones make them breed or speed up baby horse growth.

  • Hay bales are the most efficient food item for healing an adult horse's health.
  • Golden carrots are one of the two main items that trigger breeding horses.
  • Golden apples are the other main food item that can be used to start breeding horses.

How to Heal Horses in Minecraft

When a horse takes damage, you need to restore its health. The horse's health bar can be seen when you mount the tamed horse.

  • Feed a horse hay bales or golden carrots to heal it quickly.
  • Golden apples and enchanted golden apples also heal instantly.
  • Feeding invalid food to the horse will not heal it.

Breed Minecraft Horses

This is the main goal of your preparation. Once you have two tamed horses that are healthy and ready, you are prepared to begin breeding horses to get your horse foal. Breeding is important because it is the only way to try to improve the hidden equine stats of your horses in mMinecraft giving you a better chance at getting the horse's maximum speed. You must first gather the necessary, valuable horse food items before you can begin.

How to Breed Horses in Minecraft (Java and Bedrock)

Breeding horses is the same across Java and Bedrock editions. You must first ensure your two tamed horses are close together in an animal pen and are not far apart from each other.

  • Feed a horse golden carrots to activate love mode. You will need one golden carrot for each parent.
  • Feed a horse golden apples to activate love mode. This works just as well as golden carrots but is more expensive.
  • When both a saddle tamed horses are in love mode, they will move toward each other, and a baby horse will spawn.

How to Mate Horses in Minecraft

The mating process begins instantly when both parent horses have love hearts above their head. This is the signal that they are ready to create a new horse foal.

Horses begin the mating process as soon as they are both fed the correct food item. You can use either golden apples or golden carrots for this purpose. The horses produce a baby horse whose stats are a mix of the parent horses' stats and a random third factor, meaning you might get a great result.

How to Make Horses Breed Faster

You can only breed horses every five minutes. There is no way to speed up the breeding horses' cooldown itself. However, you absolutely can speed up the growth of the resulting horse foal, so it becomes an adult horse much faster.

  • Feed a horse golden carrots to greatly speeds growth of the horse foal. This is the most efficient food item for reducing the baby horse's growth time.
  • Hay bales can also be used to speeds growth of the baby horse, but they are much less efficient than golden carrots. Hay bales are better for healing old horses and general horse eating grass purposes.

How to Breed Horses and Donkeys (to get mules)

A unique result of horse breeding is the mule. If you combine a horse and a donkey, the game produces a mule, which is a sterile hybrid mob that is still useful for carrying chests.

  • Feed a horse the special horse food, like golden apples or golden carrots, to activate love mode.
  • Feed a donkey the special horse food to activate love mode.
  • The donkey creates a mule, which is a mix of the parent horses' stats. A mule is great for carrying your gear.

Special Minecraft Horses

Beyond the regular horse mob that you find in the plains, the game also features rare horse variants that cannot be bred but are still very useful mounts. These special horses in Minecraft add a unique and sometimes spooky flair to your collection. Unlike the tamed horses that start as wild horses, these types are undead horse entity mobs that you must find or spawn in different ways.

How to Get a Skeleton Horse in Minecraft

A skeleton horse is one of the coolest and easiest special horses to get, as it is automatically tamed. This horse variant cannot be tamed normally or bred. Instead, it spawns during a lightning storm event called a Skeleton Trap, which is a rare sight.

When a horse is struck by lightning, it transforms into an undead horse that is already tamed by the game. This means you can ride a skeleton horse immediately without needing to go through the lengthy process of taming. It is a fantastic horse for fast, reliable travel.

How to Tame a Skeleton Horse

Since the skeleton horse spawns from the Skeleton Trap event, it is automatically tamed when it appears. This makes it instantly available to the first player to mount it.

You can simply right-click and ride the skeleton horse right away. However, like any other horse, you will still need a saddle to control it and unlock its movement.

How to Get a Zombie Horse in Minecraft

The Zombie horse variant is a much rarer sight and cannot be found in the game naturally in Survival Mode. This unique undead horse mob is often used for decoration or in map-making.

A Zombie horse can only be obtained using a command. The Zombie horse entity is a static mob that cannot be tamed using horse food or the normal taming process.

How to Tame a Zombie Horse

A Zombie horse cannot be tamed by feeding invalid food or the normal process of horse rearing. Because it is primarily a decorative mob in the game, it is not intended to be a ridden saddled horse in Survival Mode. If you want to use it for riding, you must rely on commands to control its behavior or move it around.

Conclusion

You have learned all the essential steps on how to breed a horse in Minecraft. The key to success is getting your two tame horses, keeping them healthy by feeding them invalid food and golden carrots, and then feeding them golden apples or enchanted golden apples to activate love mode. This process produces a horse foal whose stats can exceed those of its parent horses.

Remember that a quick way to speeds growth of your baby horse is to feed it golden carrots often. Now you can focus on building your stable of high-speed, high jump tamed horses and explore the game faster than ever.