How To Find, Tame, Ride, And Breed Minecraft Horses

Let's face it, once you get an Elytra in Minecraft you won't need four-legged companions to quickly traverse the map anymore, but that's tens of hours into your adventure unless you're speedrunning. Before then, Minecraft horses are invaluable, as they provide a faster way of traveling than sprinting and don't use as much of your nutrition. Horses can be found in the wild, tamed, bred, and can even wear armor. They've also got individual statistics, so if you want to put a few hours into breeding the perfect horse, we've got all you need to know.

Where to find horses

Horses usually spawn in plains or savanna biomes in herds of between two and six. They can also be found in stables and pens in villages across any biome. They won't spawn anywhere with a light level of less than nine in Java or seven in Bedrock.

There are several variations of horses, ranging in color and pattern, and they can spawn as an adult or a foal. They come in white, buckskin, flaxen chestnut, bay, black, and dapple gray. Combined with the patterns available, there are 35 possible horse combinations to suit your preference.

How to tame horses

Once you've found the horse you want to bring back to your base, just try to mount it several times until it accepts you. Horses have a temper level between 0 and 100. When you first mount the horse, a random threshold between 0 and 99 is chosen. If the temper exceeds the threshold, the horse is tame. If it does not, you will be bucked off and the temper is increased by five.

While you will eventually be able to mount the horse and hearts appear, meaning it's tamed, you can't control its direction unless it's wearing a saddle.

How to breed horses

With a herd of horses back at your base, you'll want to know how to breed them. You won't be able to breed horses unless they're tame, so ensure you've done this first. Then, feed each of the parent horses golden apples or golden carrots until the hearts appear around it again.

This causes them to enter love mode, and a foal will be born. You can also look at our Minecraft breeding guide to find out how to breed a horse with a donkey to create a mule.

How to heal horses

If your horse becomes injured, you can feed it to heal it. Some food items are more effective at restoring hearts than others:

• Sugar - 1 heart
• Wheat - 2 hearts
• Apple - 3 hearts
• Golden carrot - 4 hearts
• Golden apple - 10 hearts
• Hay bale - 20 hearts

Horse armor

Horses can be equipped with armor made of leather, iron, gold, or diamond. Unlike yourself, horses can't wear Netherite armor. You can only craft leather armor, the other types must be found by looting chests in world structures.

Minecraft horse statistics

All horses have statistics that vary from one horse to the next--health, maximum movement speed, and jump height. These statistics are determined when the horse is born or spawned, and will not be affected by food. There is no way to display a horse's statistics, and if you want to tell what they are roughly you will have to test the horse.

Since a horse's statistics are determined when it is born or spawned, you can test your horses to find the strongest attributes for each statistic and then breed them. For example, if one horse is faster than another, but the other can jump higher, breeding the two will produce a foal that is fast and can jump high. Breeding this foal with a third horse with excellent health points will produce an all-around top-quality horse.

Health

A horse's health ranges from 15 to 30 hearts. The displayed hearts are health divided by two and then rounded down. A horse with an odd number of health points does not show the last half of a heart. If a horse loses half a heart from an unarmed melee attack, it has an even number of health points. If it doesn't, its health is an odd number.

Movement speed

A horse's movement speed ranges from 0.1125-0.3375. If you consider that a player's normal walking speed is 0.1, you can already see that horse riding is faster than walking. The speed can be adjusted by status effects, but there is no way to tell the exact movement speed of a horse.

Jump strength

Similarly, a horse's jump strength ranges from 0.4-1.0, where a jump strength of 1.0 is enough to clear 5.25 blocks, and the lowest jump strength is just over one block. Try stacking one block next to five blocks high to see the difference in potential horse jump strength. To jump while riding a saddled horse, tap the space bar. Hold the space bar to charge the jump and get the maximum jump height. This is especially helpful for scaling steep mountains.

While horses have many uses, if they do happen to pass away while in your care (hopefully not) then they will drop up to two leather, up to three experience points, and any armor they're equipped with.

Now that you're up to speed with the equine offerings in Minecraft, check out our Minecraft guides hub for all you need to know on Mojang's survival game.