In the world of Minecraft, you can be anything that you ever wanted, be it a brave zombie hunter, an adventurous cave-explorer, or even just a farm owner. Talking about farms, Minecraft has a rich species of animals that you can easily tame and take care of.
One of these animals is the horse which provides you a wide range of benefits in the game. Not only can these creatures help you travel three times faster than your usual walking speed, but also you lose less of your hunger points while riding on its back.
You don’t even have to jump over one-block high terrains when you have a horse as they just canter over them automatically. However, to make the most out of the horses in Minecraft, you have to feed them on time responsibly. In this article, we’ll know what horses eat in Minecraft.
Feeding your horses allow you to regain their health and even tame them. If you have no clue whatsoever about what you are supposed to feed your horse, you need not worry because this guide walks through all the available food items that you can use to food these cute yet functional mobs.
What To Feed Your Horse in Minecraft?
There are a large number of food items that can be fed to a horse. Each food item has varying benefits for the horses, including helping them grow faster, recovering their health, and some specific ones also helping them breed. Here’s a list of food items you can feed to your horse:
Sugar
Feeding sugar to your Minecraft horse allows you to heal it by half a heart. It also speeds up a baby horse’s growth by 30 seconds and contributes a small amount to its taming process. To get sugar in Minecraft, you must gather either of these two items – sugarcanes or a bottle of honey.
Sugarcane can generate naturally in the game near a water source as two, three, and four blocks tall with chances of 11/18, 5/18, and 2/18, respectively. They have a whopping probability of generating ten times in almost any biome of the overworld.
Moreover, swamp biomes generate ten additional times and 50 additional times in desert biomes, which is why they are twice and six times as frequent in swamp and desert biomes as compared to the other biomes.
However, remember that water sources are quite rare in the desert biomes, which is why we don’t recommend looking for sugarcanes specifically there. Talking about honey bottles, these can be obtained by using a glass bottle with either a bee nest or beehive.
Out of these items, there are many ways to obtain a glass bottle, such as fishing, crafting, drinking potions, and even Witch drops. On the other hand, a bee nest or beehive is generated naturally in the overworld and requires you to have a tool enchanted with Silk Touch to harvest it.
Once you have gathered either sugarcane or a honey bottle, you must access the crafting grid on the crafting table and place the preferred item in any available slot. Using sugarcane will yield 1x sugar, while using a honey bottle will yield 3x sugar.
Wheat
Feeding wheat to your horse in Minecraft will only heal it with one heart and speed up a baby horse’s growth by twenty seconds. Wheat can also be used for breeding a horse, but it’s not a much more effective way for the job.
Three major ways to get wheat in Minecraft are farming, crafting, or collecting drops. You can locate villages and harvest the available wheat crops to gain one wheat and 0-3 seeds that you can then grow on your own for a continuous supply of wheat.
You may often find hay bales lying around in villages that you can break and convert into wheat by placing it in the crafting grid on the crafting table. In some rare cases, you may also find foxes holding wheat in their mouth, which they drop upon death.
Apples
When fed to a horse in Minecraft, Apple restores their health by one and a half hearts and speeds up a baby horse’s growth by one minute. It can also be used to tame a horse by a small amount. You can easily find apples in the overworld through a variety of methods.
They generate naturally in oak and dark oak leaves with a 0.5% chance of dropping when broken or decayed naturally but yield nothing when they are burned. If you use a tool with fortune enchantment to break the leaves, the chances of dropping an apple are increased to 0.556%.
The apples can also be found naturally in chest loots at various different locations such as the Igloo, Stronghold, and villages. You should preferably look for an Altar chest, Storeroom chest, Weaponsmith’s chest, or plain house chest in these locations.
Moreover, you can also obtain apples by trading with apprentice-level farmer villages. This is by far the preferred method to get apples in Minecraft, as these villagers have a chance of 50% (in Bedrock edition) and 66.7% (in Java edition) to sell four apples as one of their trades.
Golden Carrots
Golden carrots are one of the best food items for horses in Minecraft as it heals them with two hearts. It also speeds up a baby horse’s growth by a minute and has a moderate effect in making an untamed horse tamed. The golden carrot can also be used on adult horses to make them breed.
There are three major ways to gain a golden carrot in Minecraft, out of which two are quite easy, but one is exceptionally hard for novice players. The simplest method is to craft your own golden carrot using the crafting table.
To do this, you first have to grow or steal a normal carrot and gather some gold nuggets through mining. Then, place the normal carrot on the crafting table and surround it with the gold nuggets to yield a golden carrot in the output box.
You can also consider finding a master-level farmer villager and trading a golden carrot for three emeralds. These villagers have a 50% chance of having this trade available for both the Java and Bedrock editions of the game.
Talking about the hard way, you must first visit the Nether and locate a Bastion remnant. Once you find one, you have to search for chests with a considerably small chance of having a golden carrot.
Golden Apple
Both golden apples and enchanted golden apples allow you to heal your horse by five hearts and increase the speed of growth for a baby horse by four minutes. It greatly affects taming an untamed horse and causes adult horses to breed like a golden carrot.
You can craft golden apples in the game using the crafting grid on the crafting table with the help of eight gold ingots and a regular apple. To do this, you must place the regular apple in the middle of the grid and surround it by filling the remaining slots with one gold ingot each.
Golden apples can also be found in chests such as Bastion Remnant, Desert Temple, Dungeon, Igloo, Mineshaft, Ruined Portal, Stronghold, Underwater Ruins, and Woodland Mansion with varying chances.
Haybales
Haybales are the best food item for horses in Minecraft as it recovers their health by ten hearts at once. It also fastens the growth speed of baby horses by three minutes but can only be fed to tamed horses, which is why it doesn’t contribute anything towards their breeding.
They are often found scattered around plains villages. While they’re also found in desert and savanna villages, the occurrence of haybales in these villages is less. Sometimes, they may also generate a part of the scarecrows around pillager outposts.
You can also craft a haybale by placing wheat in every grid of the crafting table that will yield one block of haybale.
Final Words
In a nutshell, owning horses in Minecraft can benefit you in several ways, provided you take good care of them. With the aforementioned list of food items to feed horses in Minecraft, you’ll be able to make them grow faster, replenish their health, and whatnot. We hope you found this guide helpful.
