How to tame a horse in Minecraft

To tame a horse in Minecraft, keep climbing on with an empty hand until it stops bucking you off and hearts appear. Feeding it sugar, apples or a golden carrot gets you there faster, and once it’s tamed, a saddle lets you steer.

Below you’ll find how taming works under the hood, where to get a saddle and how to breed faster horses. Checked against Java 26.3 and Bedrock 26.52.

Where do you find horses?

Horses roam plains and savannas in herds of two to six. A herd shares one coat color, with different markings. Many villages also have a stable with horses in it. Donkeys mostly live in meadows, and llamas in windswept hills and on savanna plateaus. No plains in sight? With commands on, /locate biome minecraft:plains finds the nearest one. More tricks like that are in our list of useful Minecraft commands.

How do you tame a horse?

1. Empty your hand. In Java it has to be completely empty. In Bedrock you can hold anything that can’t be used on a horse.
2. Mount it. Use the horse (right-click on PC).
3. Thrown off? Climb straight back on. Every attempt makes the horse a little calmer.
4. Hearts mean it’s tamed. Put a saddle on it and you can ride.

Behind the scenes, every wild horse has a temper value that starts at 0. On your first attempt the game picks a random threshold between 0 and 99, and the horse is tamed once its temper goes above it. Each time you’re bucked off, temper rises by 5. Without food you’ll never need more than 21 attempts, and food cuts that down.

What do horses eat, and what does the food do?

All of these also help a foal grow up faster. A tamed horse at full health won’t eat in Java, but it will in Bedrock. Zombie horses only eat red mushrooms, and skeleton horses don’t eat at all.

How do you get a saddle?

Since Java 1.21.6 and Bedrock 1.21.90 you can craft one: put three leather and one iron ingot on a crafting table, with leather in the top middle and leather, iron ingot, leather in the row below. Cows are the easiest source of leather.

Rather go looking? Saddles turn up in chests in Nether fortresses, End cities, villages and the abandoned camps added in 26.3. You can fish one up, master-level leatherworkers sell them and ravagers always drop one. To put it on, hold the saddle and use the horse. Shears take the armor off first, then the saddle.

A horse can also wear horse armor. Leather horse armor is crafted from seven leather. Copper, iron, golden and diamond horse armor only come from chests, and netherite horse armor is made at a smithing table from a diamond set. Only horses and zombie horses can wear horse armor.

How do you breed a fast horse?

Feed two tamed horses a golden carrot or golden apple each and they’ll have a foal. The parents then wait five minutes. Speed, jump strength and health are fixed at birth, and no food changes them.

Since Java 1.19.4, a foal’s stats land around the average of its parents, with some random spread up or down. Keep breeding your two fastest horses and each generation can creep upward. The slowest horse manages 4.86 blocks per second and the fastest 14.57. For comparison, you sprint at about 5.6 blocks per second. The best jumpers clear almost six blocks.

Donkeys, mules and llamas: what’s the difference?

• Donkey: tamed and bred just like a horse. It can carry a chest with 15 extra slots, but can’t wear horse armor.
• Mule: the result of a horse and a donkey. It carries a chest too, but can’t breed.
• Llama: tamed by riding it. Wheat helps a little, a hay bale more, and hay bales breed tamed llamas. A chest gives 3 to 15 slots depending on the llama’s strength. It can’t take a saddle, so you can’t steer it, but on a lead it brings up to nine other llamas along.
• Zombie horse: rides around at night with a spear-carrying zombie on its back. Once the rider is gone you can tame it by mounting it. It can’t be bred.

Horses on a server with friends

On a server, a shared stable near spawn is handy. Tie your horse to a fence with a lead so it doesn’t wander off while you’re mining. A name tag, which you can craft since 26.1 from paper and a metal nugget, tells everyone whose horse is whose. Heading out with the whole group? Check what the other animals eat too.