Horses are fantastic companions in Minecraft, offering fast transport across the vast landscapes. While finding wild horses is great, breeding them allows you to potentially create faster, healthier horses with higher jumping abilities, or simply get that specific color you’ve always wanted.
This guide will walk you through every step of the process.
1. Introduction: Why Breed Horses in Minecraft?
Breeding horses isn’t just about getting more horses; it’s about improvement and customization. The main reasons to breed horses include:
- Better Stats: Foals inherit stats (health, speed, jump height) based on their parents. By selectively breeding horses with good stats, you can gradually cultivate a lineage of superior steeds.
- Specific Colors: If you have two horses with desirable coat colors or markings, breeding them gives you a chance to pass those traits onto the foal.
- Replenishment: Sometimes, adventure takes its toll! Breeding ensures you have a steady supply of reliable mounts.
- Creating Mules: Breeding a horse with a donkey creates a mule, which can be equipped with a chest for extra mobile storage – something horses can’t do.
2. Finding and Taming Wild Horses: Your Starting Pair
Before you can breed horses, you need at least two tamed adult horses.
- Finding Them: Horses typically spawn in Plains and Savanna biomes, usually in herds of 2-6.
- Taming Process:
- Approach a wild horse with an empty hand.
- Right-click (or use the secondary action button) on the horse to attempt mounting it.
- The horse will likely buck you off several times. Keep trying!
- Eventually, red heart particles will appear above the horse. This means it’s tamed!
- Once tamed, the horse won’t buck you off anymore. You can now put a Saddle on it (right-click with the saddle in hand) to control its movement. Saddles are found in chests (dungeons, temples, villages, etc.) or through fishing/trading.
3. Required Items: Crafting Golden Apples or Golden Carrots
To encourage tamed horses to breed, you need to feed them a special food item. You can use either Golden Apples or Golden Carrots.
- Golden Carrots: Generally easier to obtain as gold nuggets are more common than ingots.
- Recipe: 1 Carrot in the center slot, surrounded by 8 Gold Nuggets.
- Golden Apples: Requires more gold but also provides potent effects if consumed by the player.
- Recipe: 1 Apple in the center slot, surrounded by 8 Gold Ingots. (Note: Enchanted Golden Apples do not work for breeding).
Crafting Recipes:
| Item | Crafting Ingredients | Grid Layout Example (3×3) |
|---|---|---|
| Golden Carrot | 1 Carrot + 8 Gold Nuggets | NNN<br/>N C N<br/>NNN |
| Golden Apple | 1 Apple + 8 Gold Ingots | III<br/>I A I<br/>III |
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N=Gold Nugget, C=Carrot, I=Gold Ingot, A=Apple
(Resource: Check details on the [Minecraft Wiki – Golden Apple] and [Minecraft Wiki – Golden Carrot])
4. Initiating Breeding: Entering “Love Mode”
Once you have two tamed adult horses and your golden food item:
- Ensure the two horses are relatively close to each other (within about 8 blocks). Containing them in a pen or fenced area is highly recommended.
- Hold the Golden Apple or Golden Carrot in your hand.
- Right-click on one tamed horse to feed it. Red heart particles should appear briefly.
- Quickly right-click on the second tamed horse to feed it the same item. It should also show heart particles.
- The two horses will turn towards each other, more hearts will appear, and shortly after, a foal will pop into existence nearby.
5. The Result: Welcoming Your New Foal
Congratulations! A small foal will appear.
- Appearance: The foal will be small and resemble its parents. Its color and markings will be inherited from one of the parents (see Genetics section below).
- Untamed: The foal is born wild and will need to be tamed once it grows up.
6. Foal Growth: How Long Does It Take?
A foal will naturally grow into an adult horse in 20 minutes of real-time play, provided the chunk it’s in remains loaded.
7. Speeding Up Growth: Feeding Your Foal
You can accelerate the foal’s growth process by feeding it certain items. Each feeding reduces the remaining growth time by a percentage.
Foal Growth Acceleration Items:
| Item | Growth Time Reduction (per item) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | ~30 seconds (2.5%) | Cheap and easy |
| Wheat | ~20 seconds (1.67%) | Easily farmable |
| Apple | 1 minute (5%) | Found from Oak/Dark Oak trees |
| Golden Carrot | 1 minute (5%) | Also used for breeding |
| Golden Apple | 4 minutes (20%) | Expensive, but fastest growth acceleration |
| Hay Bale | 3 minutes (15%) | Efficient if you have lots of wheat |
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Note: Percentages are approximate based on the total 20-minute growth time.
Simply hold the item and right-click on the foal to feed it. You can feed it multiple times until it becomes an adult.
8. Understanding Horse Genetics: Stats and Colors
This is where breeding gets interesting! A foal’s characteristics are determined by its parents.
- Stats (Health, Speed, Jump Height): These are numerical values hidden from the player by default. When two horses breed, the foal’s stats are calculated by taking the average of both parents’ stats and adding a third, randomly determined value. This random factor means offspring can be better or worse than the average of their parents, introducing variability. Aiming for parents with high stats increases the chance of getting a good foal.
- Color and Markings: The foal randomly inherits the base color and markings from one of its parents. So, if you breed a white horse and a black horse, the foal will be either white or black (with corresponding markings), not grey.
9. Breeding for Better Stats: Health, Speed, and Jump Height
To get superior horses, you need patience and a systematic approach:
- Find Promising Candidates: Tame several wild horses. Test their speed (how fast they run) and jump height (how many blocks high they can clear). Health can be roughly gauged by how many hits they take, or more accurately assessed if you have mods that show health.
- Select the Best: Choose the two horses with the best stats you’ve found to be your initial breeding pair.
- Breed Them: Follow the breeding steps outlined above.
- Raise and Test the Foal: Let the foal grow (or speed it up), tame it, and then test its stats.
- Compare and Replace: If the foal is better than one (or both) of its parents, keep it as part of your breeding stock and potentially retire the parent with lower stats.
- Repeat: Continue breeding the best horses you have, generation after generation, to gradually increase the average stats of your herd.
This process takes time but is the only way in vanilla Minecraft to obtain horses that significantly exceed the average wild horse stats.
10. Raising and Taming the Foal
Once the foal has fully grown into an adult horse:
- It is still considered untamed.
- You need to tame it just like you tamed its parents: approach with an empty hand and repeatedly right-click to mount it until you see the heart particles.
- After taming, you can equip it with a saddle to ride it and horse armor for protection.
11. Breeding Cooldown Period
After successfully breeding, both parent horses will experience a 5-minute cooldown period before they can enter “Love Mode” again. You’ll need to wait this out before attempting to breed them again.
12. Special Cases: Breeding Donkeys and Creating Mules
- Donkeys: Found in the same biomes as horses (Plains, Savannas). They can be tamed similarly. Donkeys can be bred with each other using Golden Apples or Golden Carrots, following the same process as horses, to produce baby donkeys. The key advantage of donkeys is that you can equip them with a Chest (right-click the tamed donkey with a chest) for mobile storage.
- Mules: Breeding a Horse with a Donkey (using Golden Apples/Carrots) results in a Mule. Mules combine traits: they look distinct, can be equipped with chests like donkeys, but generally have stats closer to horses. Crucially, Mules are sterile and cannot breed.
13. Quick Guide: Step-by-Step Checklist
- [ ] Find and tame at least two adult horses.
- [ ] Craft Golden Apples or Golden Carrots (one for each horse per attempt).
- [ ] Bring the two tamed horses close together (e.g., in a pen).
- [ ] Feed one Golden Apple/Carrot to the first horse.
- [ ] Feed one Golden Apple/Carrot to the second horse.
- [ ] Wait for the heart particles and the foal to appear.
- [ ] Wait 20 minutes for the foal to grow (or feed it items like sugar, wheat, apples, hay bales, or golden food to speed it up).
- [ ] Tame the grown foal by repeatedly mounting it.
- [ ] Equip with a saddle to ride.
- [ ] Wait 5 minutes before the parents can breed again.
14. Troubleshooting: Why Won’t My Horses Breed?
If you’re feeding your horses golden food but nothing is happening, check these common issues:
- [ ] Are both horses fully tamed? Wild horses cannot breed.
- [ ] Are both horses adults? Foals cannot breed.
- [ ] Did you feed the correct item? Only Golden Apples (not Enchanted) or Golden Carrots work.
- [ ] Did you feed both horses? Both need to enter Love Mode.
- [ ] Are the horses close enough? They need to be within about 8 blocks of each other.
- [ ] Is the cooldown active? Have they bred within the last 5 minutes? Wait for the cooldown to expire.
- [ ] Are they contained? Sometimes letting them roam freely can cause issues if they wander too far apart immediately after feeding. A pen helps.