What Horses Eat and How to Find Them

Horses in Minecraft PC eat apples, golden apples, golden carrots, and hay bales. You can feed a horse any of these items by holding the food in your hand, standing next to the horse, and right-clicking on it. The horse will eat the food and regain health or, if you are trying to tame it, move closer to being tamed with each meal.

Horses spawn naturally in plains and savanna biomes, usually in groups of two to six. They come in different colors and patterns — solid colors, spotted, striped, and combinations of white and other shades. You can identify a wild horse by the fact that it has no saddle and will run away when you approach.

Before you can ride a horse, you must tame it. Feeding is part of the taming process, but it is not the only step. You also need to mount the horse repeatedly until it stops bucking you off, which is when you know it is tamed.

Key Takeaways

  • Apples are the easiest food to find early in the game because they drop from oak and dark oak trees, but golden carrots and hay bales work faster.
  • Right-click a horse while holding food to feed it; the horse will eat and regain health or progress toward being tamed.
  • Feeding a horse does not tame it by itself — you must also mount it and stay on until it stops bucking you off.
  • Once a horse is tamed, you can equip it with a saddle and control it with a carrot on a stick or by holding the forward key.

Finding and Collecting Horse Food

Apples are the most common food source and require no crafting. They drop from oak and dark oak leaves when you chop down trees. Collect leaves by breaking them with any tool or your hand, and apples will fall. You typically get one apple per tree, though it is random. Early in the game, this is your fastest route to getting food for a horse.

Hay bales are made by crafting nine wheat into one hay bale on a crafting table. Wheat grows in villages or in farmland you plant yourself. One hay bale restores more health than an apple, so if you have access to a farm, hay bales are more efficient. Break hay bales with any tool to get them back as items.

Golden carrots are the most powerful horse food but require more work to obtain. You craft them by placing a carrot in the center of a crafting table and surrounding it with eight gold nuggets. Gold nuggets come from smelting gold ore or looting nether fortresses. Golden carrots restore the most health and speed up taming the fastest, but you will not have them early in the game.

Golden apples also work but are expensive to craft and better saved for other uses like healing yourself in combat. They require eight gold ingots and one apple, making them wasteful for horse taming alone.

Taming a Horse Step by Step

Start by finding a horse in a plains or savanna biome. Approach it slowly — horses will run away if you move too fast. Once you are close enough, right-click on the horse with nothing in your hand. This will mount you on the horse's back.

The horse will buck you off when ready the first few times. You will see red hearts appear above the horse when it throws you. Get back up and mount it again. Each time you mount and stay on for a few seconds, the horse gets closer to being tamed. After mounting it roughly five to ten times, the horse will stop bucking and will instead show white hearts above its head. This means the horse is now tamed.

Feeding the horse between mounting attempts speeds up the taming process. Hold an apple, golden carrot, or hay bale in your hand and right-click the horse. The horse will eat the food, regain health, and you will see red particles around it. Then mount it again. Repeat this cycle until the horse shows white hearts.

Once tamed, the horse will have a saddle icon on its back (even though no saddle is equipped yet). You can now right-click it to open its inventory and place a saddle, horse armor, and a chest if you want to carry items.

Using Food to Speed Up Taming

Feeding a horse does not replace mounting — it works alongside it. The most efficient taming strategy is to feed the horse, then mount it, then feed it again, repeating until it is tamed. This cuts the number of mounting attempts roughly in half compared to mounting alone.

Golden carrots are the fastest food for taming because each one restores more health than apples or hay bales. If you have golden carrots, use those. If not, hay bales are the next best option because they restore more health per item than apples. Apples work fine but require more of them.

You do not need to feed a horse to keep it from despawning or to keep it healthy in the long term — once tamed, a horse will stay with you indefinitely. Feeding is purely to speed up the taming process and to heal a horse that has taken damage.

Controlling Your Horse After Taming

Once a horse is tamed and saddled, you control it by holding the forward key (W by default). The horse will move in the direction you are facing. Jump by pressing the space bar — horses can jump higher than you can walk, which is useful for climbing hills and crossing obstacles.

You can also use a carrot on a stick to make the horse move faster. Craft this by placing a carrot and a fishing rod on a crafting table in an L-shape. Hold the carrot on a stick in your hand while riding, and the horse will move 20% faster and jump higher. This is optional but useful for long journeys.

To dismount, press the left shift key. The horse will stay where it is and will not despawn. You can leave it and come back later, or you can tie it to a fence with a lead if you want to make sure it does not wander.

Breeding Horses for Better Stats

Once you have two tamed horses, you can breed them by feeding each one a golden apple or golden carrot. Right-click each horse with the food in your hand, and if both horses are fed, they will move toward each other and produce a foal (a baby horse). The foal will inherit stats from both parents, so breeding two fast or strong horses can give you an even better horse.

Foals take time to grow into adults. You can speed up their growth by feeding them, but they will eventually become full-size on their own. The advantage of breeding is that you can create a horse with better jumping, speed, or health than any wild horse you find.

Keep in mind that breeding requires golden apples or golden carrots, which are expensive. Early in the game, it is usually better to tame wild horses and use them as-is rather than spend resources on breeding.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Do not assume feeding alone will tame a horse. Many new players feed a horse and then walk away, expecting it to be tamed. Feeding only speeds up the process — you must mount the horse repeatedly for it to actually become tamed. The white hearts are the only sign that taming is complete.

Do not feed a horse with your hand empty and expect it to eat. You must be holding the food item in your hand and right-click the horse. If you have the food in your inventory but not in your hand, nothing will happen.

Do not leave a tamed horse without a saddle and assume you can ride it. Once tamed, you need to place a saddle in the horse's inventory before you can control it with a carrot on a stick or other tools. You can ride a saddled horse by right-clicking it, but without a saddle, you cannot steer it properly.

Do not waste golden apples on horse taming. Golden apples are better used for healing yourself in combat or for other crafting recipes. Golden carrots are the better choice if you want to speed up taming with expensive food.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I feed a horse food it does not like?

No. Horses only eat apples, golden apples, golden carrots, and hay bales. If you try to feed a horse wheat, carrots, or any other food, it will not eat it. Make sure you are holding one of the four accepted foods before right-clicking.

How long does it take to tame a horse?

Without feeding, taming takes roughly five to ten mounting attempts, which takes about one to two minutes. With feeding, you can cut this in half. The exact number varies depending on the horse and how quickly you mount it after feeding.

Do I need a saddle to ride a horse?

You can mount a tamed horse without a saddle, but you cannot control it or use tools like a carrot on a stick. A saddle is required to steer the horse and make it useful for travel. Find saddles in dungeon chests, village tack rooms, or nether fortresses.

What happens if I feed a horse too much?

Nothing bad happens. A horse will only eat food if it needs healing. If a horse is at full health, right-clicking with food will do nothing. You cannot overfeed a horse or waste food by giving it too much.

Can I tame a horse with just apples?

Yes. Apples work fine for taming — they just require more of them than golden carrots or hay bales. If apples are all you have, use them. The taming process will take longer, but it will still work.