What Do Horses Eat in Minecraft?

Minecraft is full of lively, colorful creatures and has been expanding in its roster of mobs and breedable animals over the years. One of the earlier animals to be added was the horse, a creature that can be ridden when saddled and tamed. They are passive mobs, meaning they will not attack the player, even when provoked or attacked directly, so they’re one of the good ones. But when you’re attempting to tame or breed horses, you’ll find that, much like with any other mob, food will be vital in increasing its temper past the taming threshold, which is often randomly placed between 0-99 based on any given encounter. What Do Horses Eat in Minecraft? Read on to find out!

What Do Horses Eat in Minecraft?

Horses eat Apples, Golden Apples, Golden Carrots, Hay Bales, Wheat, and Sugar. The Golden Apples and Carrots also activate Love Mode, necessary for breeding, and Hay Bales will only work on tamed or young horses. We have gone ahead and provided a chart of the food items you can feed to horses, in ascending order based on how much it increases their temper:

While Hay Bales don’t increase temper points (since they don’t work on untamed horses, making it irrelevant) it has the highest healing qualities, healing 20 hearts for horses, and rapidly speeding up their growth, second only to Golden Apples. If you have a steady supply of apples, pound for pound, you’ll find they can be most efficient for taming as well as healing and growth, granting 3 hearts and 1 minute’s worth of growth instantly. Use any of these items and you’ll be able to get yourself ready to tame some horses!

Horses were introduced to Minecraft way back on July 1st, 2013, via the aptly named Horse Update. This concludes our guide on What Horses Eat in Minecraft! Be sure to check out our other guides on the game!