This Minecraft tutorial shows you how to raise horses, complete with screen shots and step-by-step instructions. Knowing how to domesticate and breed horses in Minecraft means that you will be able to continually breed the best horses you have in order to obtain the best horses in the game. To really get the best horses that you can, you are going to want to breed them, so heres everything you need to know about breeding horses in the Minecraft overworld.
Now you have learned how to raise a horse, why not take a look at our Taming guide, which details everything you need to know about Taming animals in Minecraft. For the complete list of animals you can breed in Minecraft, as well as what foods you should feed them to entice them to enter Love Mode, see our complete Guide to Breeding Horses and Other Animals in Minecrafts Overworld. There is much confusion for new players on how to domesticate and breed horses, burros, and mules in Minecraft, but our beginners-friendly horse breeding guide walks you through breeding each species, along with which species are best bred under various circumstances.
To breed horses in Minecraft, you will have to feed two tame horses in your vicinity with a golden apple or golden carrot each. There is nothing special about creating a mules, except for parentage, so just put a horse and donkey into the same pen, feed them both either Golden Carrots or Golden Apples, and you have got yourself a mule. When you have two horses tame together in a paddock, or one horse and one donkey if breeding a mule, make sure to have two Golden Apples or two Golden Carrots, and feed each horse one of those.
With the two Golden Apples selected from the Hot Bar, you will have to feed a single Golden Apple to each of your two horses for breeding, one at a time. After this, you can begin the breeding process by feeding two horses either the golden apple or a golden carrot you already made. To breed a mules, you need to pair one horse with one donkey, again using a golden apple or carrot. You need two if you want to breed horses, so you need at least 2 carrots and 2 gold bars to be sufficient.
To reproduce horses, just give 2 horses either one carrot or one gold apple, and they will go into loving mode. Once a horse has been fed the correct food, a horse will enter Love mode, and within seconds, it will produce a child. Once the horses in Love Mode are near each other, they will kiss for a few seconds, a baby will spawn, and the breeding process is completed. When your desired 2 horses are near each other, feed each one of Golden Apples and Golden Carrots, they will start nuzzling as Red Hearts will appear over their heads.
Feeding them will trigger the Love Mode of the two tamed horses next to it, similar to the process of breeding other Minecraft creatures like Foxes, Goats, Bees, and Axolotls. When breeding two horses together, it is most likely you will end up with a Baby Horse who looks similar to their parents. In essence, every Horse you breed has an invisible third parent, and their statistics jibe with your confidence that the Breeding Traits you desire are being produced. I wanted to breed an Ultimate Horse in my world, but in researching how, I found the way that works is mostly really complex, but overall, you cannot simply raise the Ultimate Horse, because the Horse with the two parents will always be just an average of their two parents, never exceeding either.
So, it is really important to get two horses that have good speed, jump, and health stats together in order to give you the best possible chances to breed a better horse. Basically, if you want a quick, strong, diverse-colored horse, you are going to be breeding lots of quicks in order to get the right mix. I am aware this system is mathematically biased towards breeding two horses of similar stats, since it means that the cutoff is smaller for the worse horse, but I do not think this makes it worse, and if anything, adds an extra element to choose between breeding one better and one worse horse, and having the possibility that you get a better outcome, or spending more waiting time breeding two horses at the same, better, tier, to give you the child the higher chances that it is going to turn out to be a better outcome compared to the former.
Baby horses are nice, but if you want to make them grow quickly, you might start feeding them lots of feed. While horses will only appear in Savannas and Plains biomes, these are two pretty common biomes, and they will also appear in packs of 2-4, so you are bound to find at least one couple that you can begin breeding. Horses naturally spawn in herds of about 2 – 6, and they may also be found in Animal Enclosures built by villages.
Knowing how to find and exploit the horse HP means that you will be able to hunt down the best horses in Minecraft, or even breed them with others, resulting in even more valuable Stallions and Mares. Considering how helpful horses are to traveling around in Minecraft, starting a breeding programme becomes incredibly helpful just in case something happens to your horse when out traveling. Just like a young horse, the young mule (or mules fetus) will get their stats from their parents mean stats (and an additional set of random numbers), so you could raise quite a speedy, healthy mule, but as mentioned earlier, you could equip them with breastplates afterwards.