Horses in Minecraft Survival Mode serve as loyal companions to you and your in-game friends. They are also prized possessions since they come in 7 base colors and 4 types of markings each. On top of that, it’s possible to tame an undead horse, named Skeleton horse, which is the rarest of them all. All of the aforementioned horses can be tamed, then ridden, whether for fun, to assist in PvP or PvE, or as means of exploring large Minecraft maps. Those are but a few reasons why you should learn how to breed horses in Minecraft. So, let’s jump straight into it.
Materials to breed Minecraft horses
Here are the materials needed for horse breeding in Minecraft:
- 2x Golden Apple
- 2x Enchanted Golden Apple
- 2x Golden Carrots
Clarification. You don’t need all of the materials, only need 2x of whichever food item you prefer.
Steps for breeding horses in Minecraft
Here’s a 4-step guide to breed Minecraft horses:
1. Find and tame two horses
We already went over where to find them in the taming and riding guide mentioned in the beginning. Both horses must be tamed as well, which is the most answer to, “Why won’t my Minecraft horses breed?” Also, the horses must be close to each other so consider making a Minecraft fence.
2. Feed the two horses
Put your chosen food item into the main Hotbar and make sure it’s highlighted. Then, use the same controls as in step 3 of our “carving a pumpkin in Minecraft” guide and give one food item to each of the horses, one after another. Unlike with Shears, the food item is consumed.
3. Observe the process
Each horse you fed will enter “love mode”, which you can observe as red hearts appearing over its head. Two horses will turn to each other, and after a few seconds of hearts popping up overhead, a baby horse, named foal, will appear alongside them.
Foal stats
The foal has a strong chance of adopting the color and marking of one of its parents. However, there’s a 20% chance for random markings and an 11% chance of a random base color. These can still end up being identical to one of the parents’. As for baby horse stats (health, movement speed, and jumping speed), they are an average of stats for parents stats and random stats values for a Minecraft horse. In other words, horse A + horse B + random horse / (divided by) 3.
4. Continue to breed horses (Optional)
Congratulations on learning how to breed a horse in Minecraft. Now’s the time to expand your stable and built a cavalry. Pay attention to these things about the Minecraft horse breeding process:
1. Cooldown
There’s a 5-minute cool down before you can breed the same horse again.
2. Breeding a foal
You cannot breed a baby horse – it must grow up into an adult horse first. The baby horse takes 20 in-game minutes to grow up naturally. But, you can accelerate the process by feeding the right Minecraft food to it.
3. Cross-breeding
You can breed a horse and a donkey in Minecraft. The result of this cross-breeding is a mule foal, which cannot be bred further. You’ll also earn an in-game achievement named “Artificial Selection”.