It’s not always possible to have all the biomes and structures generate close to your spawn point, even when using the best Minecraft seeds. Therefore, travelling is quite inevitable and is a part of the Minecraft experience. Though, this can be made so much easier, thanks to all the rideable mobs in the game. The fastest option is a horse. They can be tamed and saddled, so you can move much faster through your blocky world. In this guide, we will cover how you can breed horses in Minecraft, so you can have more and better mounts.
Where Can You Find a Horse in Minecraft
Horse is a passive mob that can be saddled up and ridden in Minecraft. They spawn primarily in plains and savanna biomes in herds of 2-6 horses. You can also find a horse naturally spawned as a part of a stable in villages. They have a few different color and marking variants.
How to Breed a Horse in Minecraft
1. Before you can breed horses, you will need to tame them first. Read our linked guide on how to tame horses in Minecraft.
2. After you have tamed two horses, you need their favorite food to get them in love mode. Those are golden carrots, golden apples or enchanted golden apples.
Note: We suggest you use golden carrots, since they are much more easily obtainable in the game. That best way to get golden carrots is through villagers in Minecraft. Master farmer villager will sell three golden carrots for three emeralds.
3. You can also craft golden carrots (or apples) with eight gold nuggets and one carrot (or apple) using a crafting table in Minecraft. You will need to play the carrot or apple in the middle surrounded by eight golden nuggets, as shown below.
4. Once you have two tamed horses and two golden carrots, you can start the breeding process. First, right click on one of the horses with the golden carrots selected and then do the same with the other horse.
5. The horses will now enter Love Mode, and you will see heart particles appear above their head.
6. Then, the horses will get close to each other and breed a baby horse (foal) in Minecraft.
In addition to the foal, you will also get a little bit of XP from breeding the horses. After you breed horses, you need to wait for the cooldown to wear off before you can breed them again.
How to Breed a Mule in Minecraft
Beside breeding two horses, you can also cross-breed a horse and a donkey in Minecraft. You will need to use golden carrots or golden apples for this as well.
Following the same steps as above, feed the golden carrot or apple to the horse and donkey. They will then spawn a mule foal in Minecraft. Adult mules cannot be bred, so this is the only way to get them in the game.
Minecraft Baby Horse Stats & Speed up Growth
When it comes to the appearance of the foal, they have the colors and markings of one of their parents most of the time. However, the baby horse’s appearance is random and it can be assigned random colors too. If you want a baby horse of a specific color, use two adult horses of the said color.
On the other hand, there are three unique states for every horse – health, maximum movement speed and jump height. For a baby horse, these values can be affected through their parents’ stats. The stats of both parents are averaged with the third random set of values. This means, when you breed horses in Minecraft, their values for health are added with a third random value and divided by 3. Same thing goes for the other two stats. This means, there is randomness involved here as well.
In order to increase these values and produce the ultimate horse or a mule, you will need to breed parents of the best stats you can find. If the foal born has any value higher than the parent when matured, start breeding that horse. Eventually and after many breeding sessions, you will start noticing better and better horses being produced. This is a time-consuming process, so be patient.
After you breed two horses or a horse and a donkey, you can speed up the growth of the baby in Minecraft. Here’s a complete list of food items you can feed the baby horse or mule to speed up their growth:
Food Speeds up growth by Wheat 20 seconds Sugar 30 seconds Apple 1 minute Golden carrot 1 minute Hay bale 3 minutes Golden apple 4 minutes
If your horse gets damaged, you can also use the food items listed above to heal them in Minecraft. That’s pretty much everything you need to know about breeding horses in Minecraft. If you still have any questions, let us know in the comments below.
Rarest variant of a horse is a skeleton horse. It can only spawn during a thunderstorm and when you get close, the skeleton horse trap is triggered and skeleton riders appear.
