What Do Horses Eat in Minecraft?

In Minecraft, horses can eat apples, golden apples, enchanted golden apples, carrots, golden carrots, wheat, hay bales, and sugar. However, each of these foods has different effects that you should consider when feeding your four-legged friend. In this Minecraft horse feeding guide, we will delve into the mechanics of feeding horses, focusing on all the important details you need to know to become a pro player.

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Minecraft Horse Food List

So, what can horses eat in Minecraft? We’ve prepared a list of all foods horses can eat in the game, highlighting the most important effects, such as healing and growth time reduction.

Food	Healing	Growth time reduction	Temper increase	Love mode activation
Sugar	1 HP	30 sec (600 ticks)	+3	No
Wheat	2 HP	20 sec (400 ticks)	+3	No
Apple	3 HP	1 min (1200 ticks)	+3	No
Carrot	3 HP	1 min (1200 ticks)	+3	No
Golden Carrot	4 HP	1 min (1200 ticks)	+5	Yes
Golden Apple	10 HP	4 min (4800 ticks)	+10	Yes
Enchanted Golden Apple	10 HP	4 min (4800 ticks)	+10	Yes
Hay Bale	20 HP	3 min (3600 ticks)	0	No

You can also feed a golden dandelion to a baby horse. Although this item doesn’t affect the mob’s health points or temper, it can pause its aging. If you want to resume this process, simply feed another golden dandelion to the same foal.

What Each Horse Food Does

When it comes to Minecraft horse breeding food, the efficiency of each item is estimated by reviewing how it affects each of the following four characteristics:

• Healing: All foods in the game can heal horses, but choose wisely which to use depending on how much damage your horse has taken.
• Growth time reduction: In Minecraft, foals take 20 minutes to grow into adults, but you can reduce this time by feeding them.
• Temper increase: Horse taming directly depends on its temper. This value ranges from 0 to 100. Also, each wild horse has a random taming threshold between 0 and 99 points. To tame a horse, its temper must exceed the threshold. Otherwise, you'll be bucked off when trying to mount the horse.
• Love mode activation: Minecraft horse love mode food makes two mature animals produce a baby.

Although there are many Minecraft horse foods, not all are appropriate for every in-game situation. This part of our guide will help you better manage your resources and choose proper items to heal, breed, or grow your horses.

Best Food to Heal Horses

Hay bales are undoubtedly the best Minecraft horse healing food since they give 20 HP (10 hearts). Given that horses’ health points in the game range from 15 to 30 HP, this item can restore up to a horse's full health and at least two-thirds of the maximum health of the strongest horses.

Best Food to Breed Horses

The best Minecraft horse breeding food is definitely golden apples and golden carrots, since they are way easier to craft than enchanted golden apples. These items activate a love mode, causing two adult tamed horses to produce a foal.

Also, not all players know that you can use the mentioned foods for horses in Minecraft for crossbreeding. Activate love mode for a horse and donkey to produce a baby mule. However, consider that you cannot breed two adult mules.

You may also face a question: “Why won’t my horses breed in Minecraft?” Consider that two adult horses enter a 5-minute cooldown period after producing a foal. During this time, they won't enter love mode again until the cooldown expires.

Best Food for Baby Horse Growth

Golden apples are the best Minecraft horse growth food since they reduce the time needed to reach adulthood by 4 minutes per item consumed. This means you can turn a foal into a grown horse by feeding it 5 golden apples.

How Food Affects Horse Temper

Horses are among the best Minecraft mobs for increasing the player's movement speed. Consider that the player's base movement speed is 0.1 (internal game units), while horses can reach 0.3375. Moving at that speed lets you reach any location quickly while keeping an eye on your surroundings and looking for something interesting along the way. That is why many players prefer horses when embarking on adventures with friends on online servers and having fun together.

However, before you ride a horse, you need to tame it. That’s where you’ll need Minecraft horse taming food. Feeding an animal increases its temper, strengthening your chances of taming it. Golden apples are the best for making a horse easier to tame since they increase its temper by 10 points.

How to Feed a Horse in Minecraft

What do horses eat in Minecraft? Well, now you know the answer, but you may still wonder how to feed your animals. Here's a short step-by-step guide:

1. Take any food from our list and hold it in your hand, then come close to your horse.
2. Right-click if you play on PC, or use the place/interact button on consoles.

If your tamed horse refuses to eat, it means its health is full. So, just leave it alone for a while and focus on other survival tips, which you can discover in other Minecraft guides on the Godlike blog.