Horse

Health points	15 × 7.5 to 30 × 15
Armor points	See horse armor
Size	Adult: Height: 1.6 Blocks Width: 1.3965 Blocks Baby: Height: 0.8 Blocks Width: 0.6982 Blocks
Spawn	Plains, savanna and their villages
Common drops	Leather (0–2)
Usable items	Saddle Horse Armor
Experience	Kill Adult: 1–3 Breeding: 1–7
Internal ID	JE: 100 BE: 23
Namespaced ID	horse

This article is about horses. For others, see Horse (disambiguation).

	“	The horse is a calm and confident compatriot out in the Minecraft wilds. Found in herds of two-to-six, they roam the plains and savanna biomes chomping on grass and swishing their swishy tails. But this life is an ambling, unfocused one, and the proud horse is a creature worthy of far greater adventure.	„
		— Emily Richardson^[1]

Horses are tameable mobs that can be ridden when tamed. The five types of mobs have similar overall mechanics, but differ in some aspects. R.I.P Jöergen and Jöergen #2

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 the individual horses spawn as babies.

Villages generate naturally with stables and animal pens containing horses.

Appearance

All 35 colorations of horses. Base colors, from left to right: white, buckskin, flaxen chestnut, bay, black, dapple gray, and dark bay. Markings, from top to bottom: none, stockings and blaze, paint, snowflake appaloosa, and sooty.

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 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 feature 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 or armor do render these when under the effect of Invisibility. This is a bug, but Mojang decided not to fix it.^[2]

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 experience when killed by a player or tamed wolf.
Horse armor if the horse was already equipped
A chest (donkeys only) if already equipped

Usage

Tamed and saddled horses can be used as one of the fastest means of transportation in the game, though they are unable to fit through single block-wide openings. They can also be used to climb hills and jump fences, as some horses can jump high enough to clear up to five block heights, versus the player's maximum of about one (without a potion). They can be ridden in water up to 2 blocks deep. In deeper water they separate from the player and swim uncontrolled.

Horses can be pulled along and tied up using a lead. They can be towed, swimming behind a boat by using a lead.

Equipment

Horse UI

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 right clicking on the horse, or by accessing its inventory. A horse’s inventory can be accessed by mounting the horse and opening the player inventory or by sneaking and then right-clicking on the horse. A normal horse’s inventory has two slots, one for a saddle and one for horse armor.

Riding

Behavior

Horses in herds spawned by the game are usually all the same color.

All horses roam idly, occasionally stopping to rear, swish 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 one, 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 whinneying sounds.

Horses, like most mobs, can ride in a minecart and boat. Unlike other passive mobs, horses slowly regenerate health.

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 any 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.

Like all tame animals, when a horse is killed, a death message is displayed to the owner.

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 to full size with time. The foal is born untamed, and can be tamed after it grows into an adult. 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 horse: Breeding two horses produces a horse foal. Usually the new foal has the color of one of its parents although there is a 1/9 chance of having a random color. Markings work likewise.
Bred with donkey: Breeding a horse and a donkey creates a mule foal.

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 tame.

To feed a horse, hold a valid food item and right click 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	+3
Wheat	2	20 sec	+3
Apple	3	1 min	+3
Golden Carrot	4	1 min	+5	Activates love mode in tamed horses.
Golden Apple	10	4 min	+10	Activates love mode in tamed horses. Enchanted golden apples also work.
Hay Bale	20 × 10	3 min	N/A	Hay bales cannot be fed to untamed adult horses.

Statistics

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, specific according to their horse type.

Health

Horse's health ranges from 15–30, but tends towards the average of 22–23. 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. If the horse has lost one fewer health point than the inflicted damage and did not regenerate, it has an odd number of health points, otherwise it has an even number of health points.

Movement speed

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

A horse's maximum speed is 14.5125 blocks/second. The average horse speed is about 9 blocks/sec.

Minimum: 4.8375 blocks/sec.
Player speed (walking): 4.3 blocks/sec.
Player speed (sprinting): 5.6 blocks/sec.

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

Jump strength

Horse's jump strength ranges from 0.4–1.0, tending towards the 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.

The following derived equation can be use to calculate a horse jump height from its jump strength attribute (with an rss of 5.510e-19). This function was fit to the data found in the table below and is therefore most accurate around these values.
JumpHeight = -0.1817584952 * x^3 + 3.689713992 * x^2 + 2.128599134 * x - 0.343930367
Where x is JumpStrength

The exact jump strengths, to 15 digits, required to clear several block heights are listed below.

Jump Strength	Blocks
0.966967527085333	5.000
0.847552919762898	4.000
0.715301016726230	3.000
0.564380127487889	2.000
0.432084373616155	1.250 (player's jump height)

Bred values

When breeding two horses, the foal's stats are determined by averaging both parent's stats with a third set, randomly determined as above (i.e. add both parents' stats with the random value and divide by 3). Random values are used for the third set even when the value is not normally randomized for the type of horse being bred.

Data values

Achievements

Main article: Achievements

Icon	Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Availability				Xbox points earned	Trophy type (PS)
Icon	Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Xbox	PS	Bedrock	Nintendo	Xbox points earned	Trophy type (PS)
	Saddle Up	Tame a horse.		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	20G	Bronze
	Artificial Selection	Breed a mule from a horse and a donkey.		Yes	No	Yes	New 3DS	30G	—

Advancements

Main article: Advancements

Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Internal ID
The Parrots and the Bats	Breed two animals together	Husbandry	—	`minecraft:husbandry/breed_an_animal`
Best Friends Forever	Tame an animal	Husbandry	—	`minecraft:husbandry/tame_an_animal`
Two by Two	Breed all the animals!	The Parrots and the Bats	Breed pairs of each of these 14 mobs. Other breedable mobs, if any, are ignored for the advancement.	`minecraft:husbandry/bred_all_animals`

Video

Note: Since 1.8, bread cannot be used for breeding or feeding. Since 1.9, skeleton horses can spawn naturally.

History

This page would benefit from the addition of more images.

Please remove this notice once you've added suitable images to the article. The specific instructions are: Didn't donkeys/mules/etc. also have model changes? Also, note the texture change that resulted from MC-124281's fix. Additionally, it would be nice to have the texture of the creamy horse in 18w22a.

Java Edition
April 4, 2013				Jeb hinted at adding horses when Minecraft hit 10,000,000 sales.
1.6.1		13w16a		Added horses, assisted by DrZhark (John Olarte), creator of the Mo' Creatures mod, whose horses were a baseline for Minecraft's horse models.^[3]
		13w16b		Made horses slower and reduced horses from gliding so much.
		13w18a		Removed horse saddles. Horses are now ridden using the saddle
		13w19a		Enabled access to the donkey and mule inventories by sneaking and interacting.
		13w21a		Added new GUI for horses, to control saddle/armor/inventory.
		13w22a		Added new sound effects for 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.
1.8		14w26c		Wheat's acceleration of baby horse growth was reduced.
1.9		15w38a		Added "skeleton trap" horses.: there is a chance (depending on regional difficulty) that a lightning strike spawns a "skeleton trap" skeleton horse.
		15w43a–44b		Drops changed several times. The end result is that undead horses now always drop 1 of their item (bone or rotten flesh), not affected by Looting.
		15w47b		Added sounds for horses eating food given by a player.
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.
				Skeleton trap horses' chance to spawn during lightning strikes is reduced to ¹⁄₅ of what it was.
1.13		17w45a		Added a new model for horses.
		17w46a		The new model was slightly tweaked.
		18w03a		Updated the horse model again, also slightly altered the texture.
		18w22a		Changed the creamy horse texture.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.15.0		build 1		Added horses.
Bedrock Edition
1.2.6		beta 1.2.6.2		Added the new (Java Edition 1.13) model for horses.
1.2.9				Horses no longer open their mouths when bucking the player off or taking damage.
1.11.0		beta 1.11.0.1		Horse now spawn in village stable and animal pen.
Legacy Console Edition
TU19	CU7	1.12	Patch 1	Added horses.
TU22	CU10	1.15	Patch 1	Added quick move to the horse inventory.
TU31	CU19	1.22	Patch 3	Baby horse growth can be accelerated using wheat.
TU43	CU33	1.36	Patch 13	Added sounds for horses.
TU46	CU36	1.38	Patch 15	Added "skeleton trap" horses.
TU60	CU51	1.64	Patch 30	Added the new horse model.
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

Dr. Zhark appears in the credits after the End Poem as the creator of the horses.
If a player picks up leather dropped by an adult horse, they receive the “Cow Tipper" achievement. This is due to the achievement being given when a player picks up any piece of leather instead of being given when one kills a cow.
If a player pulling a horse with a lead enters a boat, the horse swims along at the same speed as the boat.
A horse with a rider can be pulled by a lead, and can even be lifted into the air.
On multiplayer, to know which of two horses (owned and ridden by different players) is faster, each rider can apply a lead to the other horse, then play 'tug of war'. The stronger horse is faster.
In Bedrock Edition horses can be transported in a boat by riding the horse and jumping into the boat then dismounting (leaving the horse behind in the boat) and activating the boat from underneath/underwater. Attempting to activate the boat in order to pilot it from above results in the player mounting the horse again rather than being placed inside the boat to pilot it.
Horse first appears on Java Edition 2.0 as an April Fools joke feature. These horses come in shetland pony (pig) and horse (cow).

Gallery

A herd of various horses.
Dying horse mob
Image posted by Jeb on Instagram. Note the saddle usage.^[4]
Horses can wear armor and can be bound to fence posts.^[5]
A spotted foal.
A "horse" (retextured cow) from the April Fool's Joke Update, Minecraft 2.0.
The original horses from Dr. Zhark's Mo' Creatures mod.
Showing the result of right clicking a spawn egg on a horse while mounted.
Jeb and Dinnerbone riding horses, as seen on the 1.6 prerelease banner.
Showing the very 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.
The horse model in 17w45a.
A brown foal with white spots.