How to breed horses in Minecraft
Horses are one of many neutral or passive mobs in Minecraft. Much like other mobs of this type can be used to collect resources or provide food to a player, horses serve their own unique purpose if a player is able to tame them. Once tamed, a horse can be ridden, and you can give it armor to keep it safe when fighting mobs.
Breed horses in Minecraft
Horses occur naturally in Minecraft and they come in different variations. Much like chickens, cats, wolves, cows, turtles, etc, horses can be bred. Breeding horses follows the same principal as other mobs. The only trick is knowing what to feed the horse.
To breed horses in Minecraft, you need to feed them one of the following;
- Golden Apples or
- Golden Carrots
Between Apples and Carrots, Apples are much easier to obtain.
Obtain Apples in Minecraft
To obtain apples in Minecraft, you can look for them in chests found in villages, temples, mineshafts. You can also mine them.
- Find an Oak tree (they are extremely common)
- Break the leaves of the tree.
- Keep breaking them and they will drop an apple eventually.
- Look for large oak trees and you will normally get one apple from it if not more.
Obtain Carrots in Minecraft
Carrots can be found in farms in villages or in chests in temples, mineshafts, villages, etc. They are most commonly found in village farms though not all village farms have carrots.
A carrot may be hard to find but, once you’ve found one, you can plant and grow more. Unlike apples, one carrot is enough for you to create your own source of them.
Obtain gold in Minecraft
Regardless if you choose to feed a horse a golden apple or a golden carrot, you’re going to need gold. Gold is an ore that occurs underground.
To mine gold, you need an iron pickaxe. Gold can be found on levels 2-29. Read our guide on Minecraft ores for more details.
Craft golden carrot/apple
Crafting a golden apple or a carrot requires;
- An apple or carrot
- Eight gold ingots
To craft a golden carrot or apple;
- Open the crafting table.
- Place the apple or the carrot (whichever you’re using) in the middle cell i.e. second cell of the second row.
- Place gold ingots in all remaining cells.
- Collect the golden apple or carrot.
Breed horses in Minecraft
You should have at least ten golden apples or carrots ready. You can use a mix of both. There is no rule that says you can only feed a horse apples or only feed it carrots. Mix it up if you want to or have to.
- Make sure you have at least two tamed horses.
- Take the golden apple/carrot in your hand.
- Use the place item/use action on the horse while holding the carrot/apple.
- Repeat until you see hearts coming from the horse.
- Repeat for the other horse.
- If all goes well, you’ll get foal.
Conclusion
The hardest part of breeding horses is finding the gold for the apples/carrots. If you don’t know how to tame a horse, you basically have to ‘mount’ it and keep doing so until it stops kicking you off. That’s about it. It can take quite a few tries with certain types of horses while others are much easier to tame.
