Horse

Horses are passive mobs that can be ridden when tamed and saddled.

Spawning[]

Horses spawn in plains and savannas in herds of 2–6. For horses, all combinations of color and markings are equally likely. All members of the herd have the same color, but markings may vary. 20% of all individual horses spawn as foals.

Villages naturally generate with stables and animal pens containing horses.

Appearance[]

Each horse variant has unique features and markings, and a foal (baby) version. Adult horses are 1.4 blocks wide and long, and 1.6 blocks high. Foals start at half the size of adults, and in Bedrock Edition, get progressively bigger as they age. Unlike wolves and cats, the appearances of horses do not change once they have been tamed, though tame horses may be differentiated by giving them equipment.

Horses have a stocky build. They can have 1 of 7 base colors: white, buckskin, flaxen chestnut, bay, black, dapple gray, and dark bay; and 1 of 5 marking patterns: no markings, stockings and blaze, paint, snowflake appaloosa and sooty. In total, there are 35 possible horse coat combinations.

Unlike almost all other mobs, horses with equipped saddles don't render these when under the effect of Invisibility.^[1]

Horse colors and markings

Markings (identifier)	Colors
	White white	Creamy creamy	Chestnut chestnut	Brown brown	Black black	Gray gray	Dark Brown darkbrown
None
White stockings and blaze white
White Field whitefield
White spots whitedots
Black dots blackdots

Drops[]

Upon death, horses drop:

• 0–2 Leather. The maximum amount is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 0-5 with Looting III.
• 1–3 exp. when killed by a player or tamed wolf.
• Horse armor if the horse was already equipped
• Saddle if the horse was already equipped.

Upon successful breeding, 1–7 is dropped.

Killing a foal yields neither items nor experience.

Usage[]

Tamed and saddled horses can be used as a means of transportation in the game. When ridden, they are able to move faster and jump higher than a normal player. Horses can be used to climb hills and jump fences, as some can jump high enough to clear up to five block heights, versus the player's maximum of about one (without jump boost).

Horses cannot float on water when being controlled by a player. They can be ridden in water up to 2 blocks deep. In deeper water, the player is automatically dismounted.^[2]

Horses can be pulled along and tied up using a lead. They can be towed in two ways: Horses can swim behind a boat by using a lead, or a boat can be attached to a lead‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} (before putting the horse in the boat) and the player can swim to tow the boat containing the horse.

Equipment[]

Tamed horses have the following two slots available:

• Horse Armor Slot: For equipping horse armor. Exclusive to horses.
• Saddle Slot: For equipping a saddle.

Foals cannot be equipped.

Equipment can be placed on a horse by holding it and then using on the horse, or by accessing its inventory. A horse’s inventory can be accessed by mounting the horse and using inventory control, or by sneaking and then using or pressing the "open inventory" button ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} on the horse. A normal horse’s inventory has two slots, one for a saddle and one for horse armor.

Riding[]

Once a horse is tamed and saddled, the player can control it with standard directional controls, jump, and the mouse. The player dismounts using the dismount control. Like riding other entities, it is impossible for a player to use a nether portal or end portal while on a horse.

A ridden saddled horse automatically runs up any one block high slope. The horse and rider can safely fit through a space as low as 2.75 blocks high. Lower clearance risks suffocating the rider if the rider's head enters a non-transparent block. The horse itself can enter gaps as low as 1.625 blocks high, but may itself take suffocation damage when clearance is less than 1.75 blocks. Horses cannot fit through a 1-block-wide gap.

The maximum speed of horses varies between 4.74 blocks/second and 14.23 blocks/second (compared to the player's walking speed, which is about 4.317 blocks/second). About 82% of horses are able to go faster than a minecart. Horses move backward slowly, about as fast as the player when moving sideways. A horse’s speed can also be affected by potions. Speed has no relation to a horse’s outward appearance.

Ridden saddled horses have the ability of "jumping charging". When the player rides them, the experience bar on HUD is replaced by jumping charging bar. A ridden saddled horse can be made to jump and holding the control charges for a higher leap. Horses are not affected by jump boost beacons or potions.

Behavior[]

Horses wander aimlessly, occasionally stopping to rear, flick their tails, or lower their heads as though eating the grass. Unlike sheep, the eating animation does not actually cause any grass to be consumed. If a player comes near, the horses may turn to look at them. Any horse, even a wild or undead horse, can be attached to a lead without protest, although an untamed horse rears and flails its forelegs if saddled. Horses remain passive, even when hit.

Horses make neighing and whinnying sounds.

Horses, like most mobs, can ride in a minecart or a boat. Adult horses cannot ride in boats.‌^{[Java Edition only]} Unlike other passive mobs, horses slowly regenerate health.

Tamed (and untamed‌^{[Java Edition only]}) horses can be led by a player holding a golden carrot, golden apple, or enchanted golden apple. Baby horses follow adult horses.

Taming[]

Taming a horse is required to breed it, to give it equipment, or to control it while riding.

A player mounts a horse by pressing use on it with an empty hand, or while holding an object that cannot be used on a horse. A player tames an adult horse by repeatedly mounting it until the horse stops bucking off the player. Taming depends on the horse's "temper". Horses begin with a temper of 0 out of 100. When a player first mounts the horse, a random taming threshold 0–99 is chosen. The horse becomes tame if the temper exceeds this threshold. Otherwise, the player is bucked off and the temper is increased by 5, to be compared against the threshold the next time the player mounts the horse. Temper can also be increased by feeding the horse.

After repeated mountings, hearts appear above the horse, indicating that it is tamed.

In Bedrock Edition, like all tame animals, when a horse is killed, a death message is displayed to every player.

Breeding[]

Feeding two tamed horses golden apples or golden carrots activates love mode, causing them to mate and produce a foal. The foal appears more spindly than adult horses and grows in stages to full size with time. The foal can be fed to make it mature faster.

Depending on the variations of the parent horses, the offspring can be one of several types.

• Bred with a horse: Breeding two horses produces a horse foal. Usually, the new foal has the color and markings of one of its parents, although there is a ¹³⁄₄₅ chance of having a random color/markings (which may still end up being the same as one of the parents).
• Bred with donkey: Cross-breeding a horse with a donkey creates a mule foal. Mules cannot breed. This unlocks the Artificial Selection achievement.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

This is a table representing the probabilities of the color and markings of the foal when breeding two horses A and B.

Food[]

Feeding a horse food can alter its behavior, cause it to grow (if it is not yet an adult; foals normally take 20 minutes to fully mature if not fed), and/or restore its health. The table below lists the effects of the various foods horses can take. Zombie and skeleton horses cannot be fed, even if tamed.

To feed a horse, hold a valid food item and press use on the horse. Feeding invalid food causes the player to mount the horse. Horses can be fed only when feeding would have an effect, similar to other animals.

Food	Heals	Speeds growth by	Increases temper	Notes
Sugar	1	30 sec (600 ticks)	+3
Wheat	2	20 sec (400 ticks)	+3
Apple	3	1 min (1200 ticks)	+3
Golden Carrot	4	1 min (1200 ticks)	+5	Activates love mode in tamed horses.
Golden Apple	10	4 min (4800 ticks)	+10	Activates love mode in tamed horses. Enchanted golden apples also work.
Hay Bale	20 �� 10	3 min (3600 ticks)	N/A	Hay bales cannot be fed to untamed adult horses.

Statistics[]

All horses have three "equine stats" that vary from horse to horse: health, (maximum) movement speed, and jump height. These stats are created once the horse is born or spawned, and are not affected by food.

Spawned values[]

When spawned in any way except breeding – for instance, using commands, spawning naturally, spawning as part of a skeleton trap, or using spawn eggs – horses are assigned their stats within certain ranges.

Health[]

Horse's hearts ranges from 15–30, with an average of 22.5 × 11.25. Displayed hearts are health, divided by two, rounded down. A horse with an odd number of health points (15, 17, 19, etc.) does not show the last half-heart. One may test this by hitting a horse: if the horse has lost one-half heart from one punch, it has an even number of health points. Otherwise, odd.

Movement speed[]

Horse's movement speed ranges from 0.1125–0.3375 in internal units, with an average of 0.225. For reference, the player's normal walking speed is 0.1. The speed listed does not include any status effect that affects the speed of the horse or the player.

The conversion factor between internal units and blocks/sec is roughly 43.17. However, horses instead travel at just shy of 42.16 blocks/sec times their internal attribute, putting the best horse's maximum speed at 14.23 blocks/second, and the average horse's speed at about 9.49 blocks/sec.

• Minimum: 4.74 blocks/sec.
• Player speed (walking): 4.317 blocks/sec.
• Player speed (sprinting): 5.612 blocks/sec.

See also transportation methods to compare the speeds of various transportation methods.

Jump strength[]

Horse's jump strength ranges from 0.4–1.0, with an average of 0.7.

A jump strength of 0.5 is enough to clear 1 ⁹⁄₁₆ blocks, while 1.0 is enough to clear 5 ¹⁄₄ blocks.

Bred values[]

When breeding two horses, or a horse and a donkey, the foal's stats are determined by averaging both parent's stats and adding a random variation to it.

The variant of the child has an 11% chance to be a random base color, and a 20% chance to have random markings. Otherwise, it chooses the values from one of its parents.

Sounds[]

Java Edition:
Horses use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

Bedrock Edition:

Data values[]

ID[]

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Entity data[]

Horses have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Achievements[]

Advancements[]

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
	It Spreads	Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst	Monster Hunter	Kill one of these 70 mobs near a sculk catalyst: Axolotl Bee Blaze Camel Cat Cave Spider Chicken Chicken Jockey Cod Cow Creeper Donkey Dolphin Drowned Elder Guardian Enderman Endermite Evoker Fox Frog Ghast Goat Glow Squid Guardian Hoglin Horse Husk Llama Magma Cube Mooshroom Ocelot Panda Parrot Phantom Pig Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Polar Bear Pufferfish Rabbit Ravager Salmon Sheep Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Skeleton Horse Skeleton Horseman Slime Sniffer Stray Spider Spider Jockey Squid Strider Trader Llama Tropical Fish Turtle Vex Vindicator Warden Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Wolf Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Mobs that drop no experience are ignored for this advancement.	adventure/kill_mob_near_sculk_catalyst
	The Parrots and the Bats	Breed two animals together	Husbandry	Breed a pair of any of these 25 mobs: Axolotl Bee Camel Cat Chicken Cow Donkey Fox Frog Goat Hoglin Horse Llama Mooshroom Mule Ocelot Panda Pig Rabbit Sheep Sniffer Strider Trader Llama Turtle Wolf A mule must be the result of breeding a horse and a donkey for this advancement as they are not breedable together. Other breedable mobs are ignored for this advancement.	husbandry/breed_an_animal
	Best Friends Forever	Tame an animal	Husbandry	Tame one of these 8 tameable mobs: Cat Donkey Horse Llama Mule Parrot Trader Llama Wolf	husbandry/tame_an_animal
	Two by Two	Breed all the animals!	The Parrots and the Bats	Breed a pair of each of these 24 mobs: Axolotl Bee Camel Cat Chicken Cow Donkey Fox Frog Goat Hoglin Horse Llama Mooshroom Mule Ocelot Panda Pig Rabbit Sheep Sniffer Strider Turtle Wolf A trader llama does not count as a llama, and a mule must be the result of breeding a horse and a donkey for this advancement as they are not breedable together. Other breedable mobs can be bred, but are ignored for this advancement.	husbandry/bred_all_animals

History[]

Java Edition
April 1, 2013					Added horses and ponies to the April Fools update, Minecraft 2.0. Horses are actually retextured cows and ponies are actually retextured pigs.
April 4, 2013					Jeb hinted at adding horses when Minecraft hit 10,000,000 sales.
1.6.1		13w16a			Added horses.
					Horses have been assisted by DrZhark (John Olarte), creator of the Mo' Creatures mod, whose horses are a baseline for Minecraft's horse models.[3]
		13w16b			Horses are now slower.
					The gliding of horses has been reduced, so that they don't glide as much.
		13w18a			Horse saddles have been removed. Horses are now controlled using saddles.
		13w21a			A new GUI for horses has been added, to control saddles/armor/inventory.
		13w22a			New sound effects have been added to horses.
1.7.2		13w36a			Horses now spawn in savannas.
1.8		14w26c			Horses can no longer be fed bread for taming, healing, or growing.
					Wheat's acceleration of baby horse growth has been reduced.
1.9		15w47b			Sounds for horses eating food given by a player have been added.
1.11		16w32a			Horses now have different IDs: horse, donkey, mule, zombie_horse and skeleton_horse
					Unused Variant IDs now result in a white horse rather than an invisible one.
1.13		17w45a			The models of horses have been changed.
					Horses (and all variants) no longer open their mouth when emitting sounds.
		17w46a			The new models of horses have been slightly tweaked. The position of the nose has moved up to one pixel.
		18w03a			The models of horses have been changed, once again. The texture has also been slightly altered and their nose height has been increased by one pixel.
		18w22a			The texture of creamy horses has been changed, which has changed the texture from to .
1.14		18w43a			The textures of horses have been changed.
1.16		20w15a			Tamed horses can now be saddled by dispensers.
					Dispensers can now put horse armors on tamed horses.
1.18		experimental snapshot 6			Horses now follow players that are holding golden carrots, golden apples, or enchanted golden apples.
1.19.3		22w45a			Horses can no longer suffocate in the obsidian frame after going through nether portals.[4]
1.19.4		23w07a			When breeding horses and the like, the babies' speed, jump, height, and health are now a variation of the average of the parents' stats. Previously, it was an average of the parents' stats plus a random imaginary horse's stats, which caused babies' stats to be biased toward the average.[5]
Pocket Edition Alpha
v0.15.0		build 1			Added horses.
Bedrock Edition
1.2.6		beta 1.2.6.2			The models of horses have been changed to the new (Java Edition 1.13) models.
1.2.9					Horses no longer open their mouths when bucking the player off or taking damage.
1.10.0		beta 1.10.0.3			The textures of horses have been changed.
1.11.0		beta 1.11.0.1			Horses now spawn in village stables and animal pens.
1.13.0		beta 1.13.0.16			The horses no longer use the old models. Prior, old horses sometimes appeared.
1.19.70		beta 1.19.70.23			When breeding horses and the like, the babies' speed, jump, height, and health are no longer biased toward the average.
1.20.10		beta 1.20.10.20			Horses can now be fed with golden carrots or enchanted golden apples.
					Horses now follow players that are holding golden carrots or enchanted golden appless.
Legacy Console Edition
TU19	CU7	1.12	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added horses.
TU22	CU10	1.15			Quick move has been added to the horse inventory.
TU31	CU19	1.22	Patch 3		Baby horse growth can now be accelerated using wheat.
TU43	CU33	1.36	Patch 13		Sounds for horses have been added.
TU60	CU51	1.64	Patch 30	1.0.11	The models of horses have been changed.
		1.90			The textures of horses have been changed.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0					Added horses.

Issues[]

Issues relating to "Horse" or "Foal" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia[]

• A horse with a rider can be pulled by a lead, and can even be lifted into the air.
• Horses eating golden foods comes from the Greek myth of Arion, a superfast horse which only ate precious minerals like gold.

Gallery[]

Renders[]

Screenshots[]

• 

  A herd of various horses.

• 

  A dying horse mob.

• 

  Horses getting attacked by the wither.

• 

  A spotted foal.

• 

  Showing the result of right-clicking a spawn egg on a horse while mounted.

• 

  Showing the faint markings on a white tobiano. A bay tobiano is in the background for comparison.

• 

  A herd of donkeys and horses spawned next to each other.

• 

  A horse with gold armor on.

• 

  A brown foal with white spots.

• 

  A horse.

Development images[]

• 

  The original horses from Dr. Zhark's Mo' Creatures mod.

• 

  Jeb posted this horse photo on Twitter shortly before the mob was revealed.

• 

  An image posted by Jeb on Instagram. Note the saddle usage.^[6]

• 

  Horses can wear armor and can be bound to fence posts.^[7]

• 

  Jeb and Dinnerbone riding horses. 1.6 banner.

• 

  First image of horses in Pocket Edition.

• 

  The horse model in 17w45a.

• 

  The current horse model.

• 

  A horse in the mountains.

• 

  A horse on a mountaintop.

• 

  A horse sinking into snow.

• 

  Sunny riding a horse. 1.19.4 banner.

In other media[]

• 

  Horses shown in the Horse Update artwork.

• 

  Jens riding a horse in the Minecraft Legends Live Event.

• 

  Hannah riding a horse in the Minecraft Legends Live Event.

• 

  Horses seen in Minecraft: Story Mode.

• 

  Artwork of a player riding a horse in Minecraft Legends.

• 

  LEGO Minecraft Horse.

• 

  Alex riding a Horse.

References[]

External links[]

• Meet the Horse – Minecraft.net on October 2, 2017
• Mob Menagerie: Horse – Minecraft.net on March 9, 2023