Horses in Minecraft serve as more than just charming companions — they’re an effective mode of transport, especially early in the game before unlocking flight with Elytra. In addition to providing faster travel without draining hunger, horses can be bred, healed, armored, and even selected based on unique stats like speed, jump strength, and health. Here’s everything needed to raise and ride the ultimate steed.
Finding Horses in the Wild
Horses spawn naturally in plains and savanna biomes, usually appearing in small groups of two to six. They may also be found in village stables, regardless of biome. Light levels affect their spawning, with Java Edition requiring at least light level 9 and Bedrock needing level 7 or above.
There are six base horse colors — white, black, bay, buckskin, flaxen chestnut, and dapple gray — and various markings, resulting in 35 possible coat combinations. They can spawn as either adults or foals.
Taming Your First Horse
To tame a horse, mount it repeatedly until it stops bucking you off. Each horse has a hidden temper value between 0 and 100. When mounting, the game picks a random threshold between 0 and 99 — if the horse’s temper exceeds that number, it becomes tamed. Each failed attempt increases the temper by 5, making eventual success inevitable.
Once the horse accepts you and displays heart particles, it’s officially tame. However, it still won’t respond to directional input unless fitted with a saddle.
Breeding Horses for Better Traits
Only tamed horses can be bred. To do so, feed each parent horse a golden apple or golden carrot to activate love mode, indicated by heart particles. This will result in the birth of a foal. If you want a mule instead, breed a horse with a donkey.
Healing Injured Horses
Horses can be restored to full health using various food items. Here’s how much health each option recovers:
- Sugar – 1 heart
- Wheat – 2 hearts
- Apple – 3 hearts
- Golden Carrot – 4 hearts
- Golden Apple – 10 hearts
- Hay Bale – 20 hearts
Healing is essential when your mount takes damage during exploration or combat.
Equipping Horse Armor
Horse armor protects your equine ally and comes in four types: leather (craftable), iron, gold, and diamond (lootable). Netherite armor isn’t available for horses. Armor not only adds defense but also gives each horse a distinctive look.
Horse Stats: Health, Speed, and Jump Strength
Every horse in Minecraft has randomly generated stats that define how effective they are for travel and survival. These stats are determined when a horse is spawned or born and are not affected by food. The only way to evaluate them is through hands-on testing.
Health
A horse’s health ranges between 15 and 30 points (or 7.5 to 15 hearts). Health displays as full hearts above the toolbar, with half-hearts rounded down. To determine if a horse has an even or odd number of health points, test by hitting it with an unarmed melee attack — if half a heart is lost, it’s even.
Movement Speed
Speed values range from 0.1125 to 0.3375, while the default walking speed of a player is 0.1. Although exact values aren’t visible in-game, speed can be roughly estimated by racing horses over equal distances.
Jump Strength
Jump strength varies from 0.4 to 1.0, affecting how many blocks a horse can leap over. A jump strength of 1.0 allows clearing just over five blocks. To test jump potential, build a staircase of varying heights and observe how high your horse can leap. To jump while mounted, press and hold the spacebar to charge the jump and release for maximum height — helpful for navigating mountainous terrain.
What Happens When a Horse Dies
If your horse is defeated, it may drop up to 2 leather, 3 experience points, and any armor it had equipped. While they can’t be revived, this does offer a chance to recover valuable gear.