- In Minecraft, you may breed horses by feeding Golden Apples or Carrots to two domesticated horses.
- You’ll need Gold Ingots or Nuggets to make the Golden Apples or Carrots you need.
- A horse and a donkey may also be bred to create a mule, which cannot be bred further.
NewsIn Minecraft, you can be practically anything. A courageous cave diver, a formidable warrior, or simply a humble farmer. You’ll also need farm animals if you wish to construct a farm.
Horses are one of the few creatures that can be tamed and bred in Minecraft. This implies that you may start with two horses and end up with hundreds. You’ll just need enough apples and carrots to feed everyone, as well as a lot of gold.
Here’s a guide on breeding horses in Minecraft, including how to care for the newborn foal.
How to breed horses in Minecraft
There are a few steps that you’ll need to take before you can start breeding. Initially, you must locate and tame two horses.
Tame two horses
Horses spawn in herds in grasslands and savannas at random. In certain communities, horses would be kept in stables and pens. You can take any of these horses — there’s no gender in Minecraft, so you don’t need to worry about grabbing a male and female.
To tame a horse, you must approach it and “use” it ( right-click or left trigger ) while carrying nothing, allowing you to clamber upon its back. It will definitely buck you off after a few seconds the first few times you try this. Continue until hearts emerge above the horse and it stops bucking you off. It can take a while, so be patient.
After you’ve tamed a horse, you may attach it to a Lead or saddle it. This will let you quickly move it somewhere — for example, inside of a fenced area.
Tame two horses and keep them together somewhere.
Craft Golden Apples or Carrots
To get your horses in the mood to breed, you have to feed them some special treats: Either Golden Apples or Golden Carrots .
Golden Apples may be found in treasure boxes all across the Overworld and Nether, but they can also be crafted. Place a regular Apple in the center of your Crafting Menu, then surround it with eight Gold Ingots to craft a Golden Apple.
Fortunately, golden carrots aren’t as pricey. You can craft them by surrounding a regular Carrot with eight Gold Nuggets.
Feed your horses
You can breed after you have two horses and at least two golden meals.
Bring your horses together and serve each of them a Golden Apple or a Carrot. Hearts will appear above their heads, and in a few moments, a baby horse will appear.
The foal (baby horse) will follow its parents wherever they go. It takes about 20 minutes for a foal to mature into an adult horse, but you can speed the process up by feeding it apples, sugar, wheat, or hay.
Tips and tricks for breeding horses in Minecraft
In Minecraft, horses can come in seven different colors, and have five different types of “markings” on them. This implies that the game has 35 distinct sorts of horses.
When you breed two horses, the game rolls dice to determine the appearance of the offspring. Most foals will share their color and markings with one of its parents, but there’s about a 29 percent chance that it ends up with a completely random appearance. Hence, if you want a horse of a certain hue, you must breed two horses of that color.
Every horse in the game also starts with random statistics including health, movement speed, and leap strength. When you generate a foal, the game determines its attributes by averaging the stats of its two parents and a completely arbitrary fictitious horse. This implies that the better the parents, the better the offspring – yet creating a flawless foal is very impossible.
Finally, horses do not have to just breed with other horses. If you breed a horse with a donkey (follow all the same steps), you’ll end up with a baby mule. Mules cannot breed with any other animal.
William Antonelli
Tech Reporter for Insider Reviews
William Antonelli (he/she/they) is a New York City-based writer, editor, and activist. As a founding member of the Reference team, he helped grow Tech Reference (now part of Insider Reviews) from humble beginnings into a juggernaut that attracts over 20 million visits a month.
Outside of Insider, his writing has appeared in publications like Polygon, The Outline, Kotaku, and more. On networks like Newsy, Cheddar, and NewsNation, he’s a go-to source for tech expertise.
You can follow him on Twitter @DubsRewatcher or contact him at [email protected]
