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Before you conquer the end and obtain a pair of wings, you may wish there was a faster way to traverse your wide Minecraft world. Luckily horses are relatively common and come at varying speeds, jump heights, and health values. Once you have tracked down a saddle, you can easily begin taming and breeding horses. There are a few complexities with breeding horses, especially if you want a horse with maxed-out stats. This guide will outline the required materials to breed horses, the steps required to do so, and what you can accomplish with horses in Minecraft.
In a Nutshell:
To breed horses in Minecraft, you need to tame both of them. Taming a horse can be done by simply right-clicking on them and if they buck you off, hop back on top until they stop kicking you off their back. After they are both successfully tamed, keep them close to each other and feed both of them a golden carrot.
The list of required materials to breed horses is pretty small. You just need two horses and either 2 golden apples, 2 golden carrots, or one of each. Since golden apples offer buffs, you should save the golden apples for yourself and look towards using golden carrots. Not to mention, golden carrots only require gold nuggets instead of the much more expensive golden ingots. Finding carrots is a matter of locating a village or patiently waiting for it to drop from zombies.
First, let’s gather some carrots to breed the horses with. Search nearby villages or kill many zombies to locate your carrot. If you only have a small quantity, remember that you can easily till the ground and grow more carrots if needed.
Gather your carrots and begin gathering some gold. Mine out below “Y” level 31 to find some gold ore. If you are near badlands you can also find a lot of gold ore near the surface. Regardless of your method, track down some gold and begin to smelt it for your carrots.
Once your ore has finished smelting, turn your ingots into nuggets by placing them in your crafting menu.
Now you can craft golden carrots. Place a golden carrot in the middle-most slot of your crafting menu and surround it with golden nuggets.
You will need two of these if you want to breed horses, so you will need at least 2 carrots and 2 gold ingots to have enough. Now that you have your carrots ready you can start to breed horses. If you have trouble finding horses, ensure that you are looking in savannahs or plains biomes as these are the only two biomes where horses will naturally spawn.
To breed two horses, you need to tame both of them. Taming a horse is simple, just right-click on them and if they buck you off, hop back on top until they stop kicking you off their back. After they are both successfully tamed, keep them close to each other and feed both of them a golden carrot. Try not to feed the same horse twice as even if the horse is in love mode you can still accidentally feed it extra with no benefit. After both the horses have been fed a golden carrot you will get a small foal as a result.
That’s all you need to breed horses.
If you have collected any saddles you can strap them onto a horse to ride them anywhere you want. They will still wander aimlessly so try to keep an eye on them or a lead tied to you so they do not get lost or stuck in a hole. To equip a saddle to a horse, hop onto its back and open your inventory, there will be a slot for you to place saddles and a set of horse armor.
You can also breed horses with donkeys to have mules. Mules can be ridden across your lands just like a regular horse, but they come with the additional benefit of holding a chest. Breeding a horse and a donkey is identical to just breeding horses, keep a horse and a donkey close by and feed both of them a golden carrot to make a mule.
You cannot breed mules. Once you have the offspring of a horse and a donkey, the resulting mule cannot be bred with any mules, horses, or donkeys. You can have the mule hold a chest by right-clicking on the mule with a chest selected in your Hotbar.
If you want your horse to move incredibly fast and jump as high as possible, it is best to find a horse in the wild that has the stats you are looking for. Breeding two horses oftentimes result in a slower horse or a horse that cannot jump as high. This is due to the formula in the game mechanics of taking an average of both parent horses stats. Unless both the parent horses are near perfect in their stats, the offspring will likely not be as fast or be able to jump as high.
You can only breed tamed horses in Minecraft. While you can feed a wild horse golden apples or carrots, this does not cause the horse to enter love mode. Only if the horse is tamed can you breed horses. This is also the case for donkeys. To tame a horse simply right-click to start riding the horse and keep trying until the horse stops bucking you off.
There is no stat meter to tell you if a horse is fast in Minecraft. Ride it yourself to know for sure. Your player character’s walk speed is about 4.32 blocks a second and the slowest horse can only go 4.74 which is slower than the character’s sprint speed. The fastest horse stat can reach a height of 14.23 blocks a second. The game will not tell you your total blocks moved per second, so simply go for a horse that feels fast.
Breeding horses is relatively simple as long as you can locate carrots and have a decent supply of gold. Breeding horses is not too desirable as their offspring will always have an average of the two-parent horse’s stats. Try to breed horses with near-perfect stats to ensure that the offspring of each horse is as fast and can jump as high as you want it to. You can also breed a horse and a donkey to make a mule. There is a lot to consider when you are breeding horses.
Congratulations, you now know how to breed horses. It can be complicated getting a horse with perfect stats, but if you manage to get two horses with nearly maxed speed almost every single one of their offspring will also have nearly maxed speed. Do not forget to tame a donkey as well, as a mule offers the same benefit as a horse, but can carry an inventory for you as well.
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