How to tame and breed horses in Minecraft

Mount a wild horse with an empty hand and stay on until hearts appear. Each failed try makes it calmer, food speeds things up, and two tamed horses fed Golden Carrots give you a foal. All numbers below come from the Java Edition 26.3 game files.

Horses spawn in Plains, Sunflower Plains, Savanna, Savanna Plateau and Windswept Savanna, and in villages. Every wild horse gets random stats when it spawns:

A baby cannot be ridden or tamed: pick an adult. The Horse page lists its variants and drops.

Every horse has a temper from 0 to 100. A wild one starts at 0. Food raises it, and also heals the horse and makes a foal grow faster. Hold the food and use it on the horse:

Healing is in health points, 2 per heart. Sugar is the cheapest boost: 10 Sugar take a wild horse from 0 to 30. Do not click a wild horse with any other item in hand: it rears up and refuses it.

Use the horse with an empty hand to get on. About every 2.5 seconds the game runs a check: the horse is tamed with a chance equal to its temper out of 100. If the check fails, its temper rises by 5 and it throws you off. Get back on and repeat.

• From temper 0: about 6 checks on average, the first one always fails.
• From temper 30 (10 Sugar): about 2.7 checks.
• Heart particles mean the horse is tamed and belongs to you.

Without a Saddle you sit on the horse but cannot steer it. Craft one from 3 Leather and 1 Iron Ingot, or find one in chests: village tanneries and weaponsmiths, Nether Fortresses, bastion stables and End Cities hold saddles.

1. Sneak and use the horse, or press E while riding, to open its inventory.
2. Put the Saddle in the saddle slot. A tamed adult horse can also be saddled by using the Saddle on it.
3. Ride with the movement keys. Hold Space to charge a jump, then release it.

Shears take the saddle or the armor off again.

The game shows no stats in survival. In a world with cheats, look at the horse and run:

/attribute @n[type=minecraft:horse] minecraft:movement_speed base get

/attribute @n[type=minecraft:horse] minecraft:jump_strength base get

/attribute @n[type=minecraft:horse] minecraft:max_health base get

@n targets the nearest horse, so stand next to the one you want. Compare the values with the table in the first step: a speed above 0.3 and a jump above 0.9 are among the best you can get. The /attribute page explains the other options.

Copper, iron, gold and diamond horse armor come from the chests of village weaponsmiths, desert pyramids, jungle temples, dungeons, stronghold corridors, Nether Fortresses and End Cities. Diamond also turns up in ancient cities, gold in ruined portals. For netherite, put the Diamond Horse Armor, a Netherite Upgrade Smithing Template and a Netherite Ingot in a Smithing Table (see how to get netherite). Netherite horse armor also gives 10% knockback resistance and, like every netherite item, does not burn if it falls into lava.

Both horses must be tamed adults. Feed each one a Golden Carrot, a Golden Apple or an Enchanted Golden Apple. Hearts appear, they walk to each other and a foal spawns. The parents can breed again after 5 minutes. A horse bred with a donkey gives a mule, which cannot breed.

The foal gets each stat separately: the average of its parents, plus or minus a random amount of up to half the gap between them plus 15% of the full range. Most foals land close to the average; a value past the limit bounces back inside it. Two parents with speeds of 0.30 and 0.32 give a foal between about 0.27 and the 0.3375 cap. To raise a line of fast horses, always breed your best foal with your best adult.

A foal takes 20 minutes to grow up. The food table shows how much each item shortens that. A Golden Dandelion used on a foal stops it from growing; use another one to let it grow again.

• A Lead lets you walk a horse behind you and tie it to a fence.
• Horses take no fall damage up to 6 blocks, and half the usual damage beyond that.
• Underwater, a horse throws its rider off: go around deep water.
• Build a stable with a fence and a gate so horses do not wander off.