How to Tame a Horse in Minecraft

It is actually quite easy to tame a horse in Minecraft, as long as you come prepared! A tamed horse is the fastest way to travel in Minecraft and you’ll need to tame a horse before you can breed more horses.

Of course, you’ll first make sure there is a horse nearby. Once you find your future steed, follow these simple steps.

Food Method (easy to tame):

• Feed the horse some food, as much as you think will help (See the chart below)
• Right-Click on the horse, wait until it stops bucking and hearts come out
• Press E to open the horse window
• Drag the saddle from your inventory to the saddle slot
• Ride your horse! Use WASD to move and Shift to dismount

Alternate No-Food Method (no resources to tame):

You can just keep jumping on a horse until it eventually becomes tamed. This method takes less resources, but this will take longer than the food method.

If you try to ride a horse without feeding it first, you will likely get bucked off. Feeding a horse will allow you to tame it much easier, this is why I especially recommend feed-taming if you want to tame a large number of horses all at the same time.

Note: both methods work with for taming donkeys and mules as well.

Here’s a chart showing what foods are most effective for taming horses in Minecraft:

How to Make a Saddle

You’ll need to craft a saddle before you attempt to tame a horse. Once you’ve tamed a horse, you’ll notice that you can’t actually CONTROL the horse – this is what the saddle is for. Once a horse has a saddle it is permanently tamed and controllable.

Saddle Recipe:

• 5 Leather
• 3 Iron Bars
• Crafting Table

To craft, arrange the materials like so:

And that should be it! Horses are pretty great in Minecraft so also be sure to take care of yours. You can craft horse armor, leads, and even bales of hay for your Minecraft horse – and you can even breed horses, which we’ll tackle in another article.