How to tame a horse in Minecraft

Whether for breeding, riding or just to keep one close by, horses are great for any Minecraft player. But to do these things, you must first tame the horse. But how do you do this?

Horses start off as a wild and, through repeated actions, you can eventually tame it. There are two ways to tame a horse in Minecraft – feed it or mount it.

A horse’s temper

Each horse has a “temper” value between 0 and 100. However, the horse also has a “temper threshold” value too, which is between 0 and 99. The horse becomes tame if the temper value exceeds this threshold.

The actions you perform increase the temper value – so, below, we’ll detail how much each action adds to the temper value, so you can see which are the most effective.

Mounting a horse

Press “use” on a horse, when you have nothing in your hand. Now attempt to get on (mount) the horse.

If the horse hasn’t been tamed, you’ll be thrown off. That’s not good for your backside, but the horse’s temper value will be increased by 5!

Feeding a horse

Wild horses can be fed apples, wheat or sugar. Any of these increase the temper value by 3.

However, if you create a golden apple or carrot and feed this to the horse, temper increases by 10 and 5 respectively. In other words, if you can afford it, a golden apple is the quickest way to tame a horse.

If you try and feed a horse anything else, you’ll simply end up mounting the horse instead.

Keep repeating the above actions until hearts appear above the horse. When they do, it’s tame. Now you can ride your horse off into the distance without being thrown off after a few seconds!