How to tame a Minecraft horse

Looking to tame a Minecraft horse? These trusty block-based steeds are the perfect way to travel lengthy distances across the map, and as they are docile Minecraft creatures, they are easy to tame. But first, you'll have to to find one. Minecraft horses spawn differently depending on your biome and Minecraft seeds, meaning you're only going to find one in certain locations.

When you do you're going to need to know how to tame it as well—and it's not immediately obvious what you need to do to impress your prospective pony pal. It's a difficult process, but with a little help from this Minecraft horse guide, you'll learn how to tame horses, and even craft a saddle. You'll be pony whispering before you know it.

Minecraft horse spawn: where to find them

Minecraft horses spawn in either the Plains or Savannah biomes and come in groups of between two and six. They are passive mobs, meaning they don't attack you, although you can attack and kill them for minimal XP and some leather (you monster).

There are 35 different types of horse in total, although the differences between them all are aesthetic. These types come from the fact that the seven different colors and five different marking types can all be mixed and matched, offering a lot of variety between each type of horse.

How to craft a saddle

Before you start taming horses, you’ll need to acquire a saddle: Without one you won’t be able to ride tamed horses or take them anywhere, making it a bit pointless. Unfortunately though, you can’t craft them, so you have to find them using one of two methods.

The first way is through chests, which you can either find in normal dungeons, or in a Nether Fortress. Saddles aren’t astoundingly rare items, so you should find one and be able to add it to your inventory soon enough.

You can also catch a saddle while fishing, which seems strange. Hopefully, someone threw it into the water in a fit of rage, and you haven’t just snagged it off the back of a drowned horse. Bit grim to think about, to be honest.

How to tame a horse in Minecraft

Once you find a horse in the right biome, you just need to approach it to begin taming it. Put away any weapons so you don't accidentally attack it.

After you're close enough, you need to climb on the horse and mount it, but you may be bucked off a few times. To climb on, you’ll either need to right-click on the horse, or hover over it and press the ‘Mount’ button, depending on whether or not you’re playing the Java Edition or not. You won’t need the saddle for this part, but you will need it next.

This may take a little bit of rinse and repeat, but it is not an especially difficult task. Once you're on board, you won’t be able to actually go anywhere on it until you open your inventory and equip the saddle. With this done, you’ll be able to ride your tamed horse all across the map.

How to breed Minecraft horses

In order to breed horses, you will need either two Golden Apples, two Enchanted Golden Apples, or two Golden Carrots. Assuming you know how breeding works in real life, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that you also need two horses.

Both of the horses also need to be tamed, which you can do by following the steps above. With the two horses near each other, you then need to feed each horse one-half of the food pairs listed above. When this happens, the horses will get red love hearts over their heads and will turn to look at each other. Soon, the hearts will disappear and a baby horse will appear in its place. In case you were wondering, you absolute monster, there are no rewards for killing baby horses.

Horses have a five-minute cooldown in between breeding, which is pretty spectacular recovery when you think about it.