If you’ve ever trekked 1,000 blocks across a frozen tundra carrying a stack of diamond ore and a chest full of newly harvested wheat, you know exactly how soul-crushing slow on-foot travel can be in Minecraft. If you’ve ever wondered how do i tame a horse in minecraft, you’re not alone – horses are one of the most useful early to mid-game upgrades you can get, clocking in at twice the speed of sprinting and capable of jumping over small cliffs and fences you’d normally have to build a path around. I’ve spent close to 1,000 hours in vanilla survival worlds testing different taming methods, breeding high-stat horse lines, and even losing a few beloved mounts to unexpected creeper explosions, so I’m breaking down everything you need to know to get your first horse, keep it safe, and get the most out of your new four-legged companion.
What You Need Before You Try to Tame a Horse in Minecraft
You don’t need any fancy tools or rare items to tame a horse, but having the right supplies on hand will cut down your taming time drastically and save you a lot of frustration. A lot of new players assume you need a saddle to tame a horse, but that’s not true – saddles are only required to control the horse after it’s tamed, not for the taming process itself. The only items that help with taming are food, and each type of food gives a different boost to your taming progress, plus extra benefits like healing damage to the horse or speeding up baby horse growth.
Here are the best food options to bring with you when you go horse hunting:
- Sugar: Speeds up taming by 3%, heals 1 heart of damage to the horse, and is extremely easy to gather from sugar cane farms.
- Wheat: Speeds up taming by 3%, heals 2 hearts, and speeds up baby horse growth by 20 seconds, making it a great multi-use option for new players.
- Golden Carrot: Speeds up taming by 5%, heals 4 hearts, and is required for breeding horses later on if you want to raise higher stat offspring.
- Golden Apple: Speeds up taming by 10%, heals 10 hearts, and can be used to breed tamed horses for the best possible stat boosts in baby foals.
If you don’t have any of these food items on hand, you can still tame a horse with an empty hand, but you’ll likely get bucked off 5 to 10 times before the taming process is complete. If you’re planning to ride the horse right after taming it, make sure you have a saddle in your inventory first – otherwise you’ll be stuck sitting on a tamed horse that walks wherever it wants, which usually ends with you falling off a cliff or running into a group of zombies. You can find saddles in dungeon chests, village blacksmith chests, as a rare drop from fishing, or by trading with master-level leatherworker villagers for 6 emeralds.
Step-by-Step Process to Tame a Horse Successfully
Once you have your supplies gathered, the actual taming process is pretty straightforward, but there are a few small tricks to make it go smoother. First, locate a herd of horses – they spawn most commonly in plains and savanna biomes, usually in groups of 2 to 6, and they come in 7 different base colors with 5 different marking patterns, so you can pick one that matches your style. Approach the horse slowly, and make sure you don’t have a weapon selected in your hotbar – it’s easy to accidentally punch the horse while you’re trying to mount it, which will make it run away and reset all your taming progress.
If you brought food, right click on the horse with the food item first to feed it. You’ll see hearts pop up temporarily when you feed it, which means your taming progress has increased. Next, right click on the horse again with an empty hand to mount it. It will almost always buck you off the first 1 to 3 times, even if you fed it a lot of high-tier food. Don’t chase it too fast when it runs a short distance away – walk slowly after it, and it will calm down after a few seconds.
Keep repeating the process of feeding it (if you have extra food) and mounting it until you see red hearts pop up all around the horse and it stops bucking you off. That means it’s fully tamed. You can double check by opening the horse’s inventory while you’re mounted – if you see dedicated slots for a saddle and horse armor, the taming process is complete. If you’re playing on a multiplayer server, make sure you check that the horse isn’t already claimed by another player first, as many servers have protection plugins that prevent you from taming mobs that belong to someone else.
Donkeys and mules follow the exact same taming process, and while they can’t wear horse armor, they can be equipped with chests to carry up to 15 extra stacks of items, which makes them perfect for long mining trips or cross-world moves.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Taming a Horse
I’ve made almost every possible mistake when taming horses over the years, so I can tell you exactly what not to do to save you time and frustration. The first and most common mistake is accidentally hitting the horse before it’s tamed. Even a single punch will make the horse run away as fast as possible, and it will reset all your taming progress entirely. I once did this when I was fumbling to switch from my iron sword to wheat after fighting a group of skeletons nearby, and I had to chase the horse for 10 minutes across a savanna before it calmed down enough to try again.
Another big mistake is trying to control a tamed horse before you put a saddle on it. Even if the horse likes you, you can’t steer it or make it jump without a saddle – you’ll just be along for the ride wherever the horse decides to go, which is almost always into a dangerous area if you’re playing on hard mode. Always keep a saddle in your inventory if you plan to ride the horse immediately after taming it.
A third mistake is leaving your tamed horse unsupervised without a lead or fence. Tamed horses don’t despawn, but they will wander around slowly if you don’t tie them up, and hostile mobs like zombies, skeletons, and creepers will attack them if they get close enough. I once left my fastest horse tied to a fence post just outside a cave entrance while I went mining, and I came back to find a creeper had exploded next to it and destroyed both the fence and the horse. Now I always tie my horses at least 20 blocks away from any cave entrances or dark areas where mobs can spawn.
Finally, don’t ignore a horse’s stats before you invest rare items in it. Not all horses are created equal: some can run as fast as 14 blocks per second, while others are barely faster than sprinting. Some can jump almost 6 blocks high, while others can barely clear a 1-block fence. Always test a horse’s speed and jump height before you spend diamonds on horse armor or name tags for it. You don’t need mods to check stats – just race it against a friend’s horse, or build a small obstacle course to test jump height easily.
What to Do After You Tame a Horse in Minecraft
Once your horse is tamed, there are a few extra steps you can take to make it even more useful and keep it safe. First, equip the saddle by opening the horse’s inventory and placing it in the dedicated saddle slot. Once the saddle is on, you can steer the horse with WASD, make it jump by holding down the space bar (the longer you hold it, the higher it will jump), and dismount by pressing left shift.
Next, you can add horse armor if you have it to protect it from damage. There are 5 tiers of horse armor in the latest version of Minecraft: leather, iron, gold, diamond, and netherite. Leather horse armor can be dyed to match your base’s color scheme, while netherite horse armor is the strongest and most durable option. Netherite horse armor won’t burn in lava, so it’s the only safe option if you plan to ride your horse through the Nether.
If you want to get even better horses, you can breed two tamed horses by feeding each of them a golden carrot or golden apple. They will stand close to each other and spawn a baby horse that inherits a mix of both parents’ stats, plus a small random boost. If you breed multiple generations of horses, you can eventually get a horse that runs faster than any other mount in the game or jumps high enough to clear most building walls. It’s a fun late-game project if you’ve already beaten the Ender Dragon and are looking for something new to work on.
You can also use a name tag to give your horse a custom name, which will prevent it from ever despawning even if you wander thousands of blocks away. I named my first ever max-speed horse Speedy, and I’ve transferred it across three different world updates and multiple multiplayer servers over the years. If you’re using a donkey or mule instead of a horse, you can right click on it with a chest to add 15 extra inventory slots, which is perfect for long trips where you need to carry more items than your own inventory can hold.
If you’re traveling with your horse and need to stop to explore a cave or build a small outpost, always tie it to a fence post with a lead to make sure it’s still there when you get back. Leads are cheap to craft with 4 string and 1 slimeball, so I always keep a stack of them in my inventory whenever I’m out exploring with my horse. You can also tie leads to boats if you need to transport your horse across an ocean, which is way faster than leading it through the water manually.
Taming a horse is one of the best quality of life upgrades you can get in your Minecraft world, whether you’re a brand new player just building your first base or a veteran player who’s beaten every boss in the game. Now that you know how do i tame a horse in minecraft, you can stop walking across endless biomes and start exploring way faster, carry more items on long trips, and even have a loyal companion to come with you on all your adventures. Don’t be discouraged if you get bucked off a few times your first try – even the most experienced players have had to chase a spooked horse across a field once or twice. Once you have your first tamed horse, you’ll wonder how you ever played the game without one.