Horse

Horses are a planned 1.6 mob. DrZhark (John Olarte) - creator of the Mo' Creatures mod - assisted with the horse's creation, which is the same as the horses from Mo' Creatures.

Once a horse is tamed and a saddle is attached, they can be controlled with standard directional controls and the mouse. Different variations of horse armor can be put onto horses. They can be tied to fence posts using a lead. There are different breeds of horses, similar to the different breeds of cats. A foal's growth can be accelerated via the use of apples, wheat, sugar, bread, and hay blocks. Horses are completely passive when hit.

Appearance
There are currently 5 variations of the horse mob in the game, 2 of which spawn naturally in the wild. Normal horses are all the same breed and can be 1 of 7 base colors; white, dapple gray, dark bay, bay, flaxen chestnut, buckskin, and black. The horses also have a secondary coloring known as markings. There are 5 different markings; no marking, stockings, snowflake appaloosa, pinto, and black blanket. In total there are 35 possible horse color combinations taking into consideration all base colors and markings. There is also the donkey which can be bred with a horse to produce the mule. There are two types of undead horses: a zombie horse and a skeleton horse, but they cannot be tamed by the player, and can only be brought into the game by editing the region files. (For entity data values, see also Horse Variants.)

Horses
Horses are the regular horse breed in the game, and occasional foals will spawn too. They can wear saddles and any horse armor. Foals cannot be tamed or ridden, but can be fed to mature faster. See table below.

Mules and donkeys
Donkeys are a variation of horses, which spawn less commonly than normal horses. Young donkeys and mules can be fed apples and sugar in the same manner as horses. They can wear a saddle, but not horse armor. Instead, they can wear a chest, which can be accessed while riding the donkey/mule and accessing the inventory. Upon death a donkey or mule will drop the attached chest and its contents. As in the real world, mules can be produced by breeding a horse with a donkey, which seems to work more rarely than normal breeding of two horses or two donkeys. Mules themselves cannot breed. Donkeys and mules use the same audio.

Skeleton
A skeleton variation of a horse. It does not appear to be tameable. It has only one texture and cannot equip anything. It can only be spawned through third party editing programs at this time. Currently, it seems to be completely passive if spawned. This might change when it is officially released. These mobs have their own audio. They make various metallic sounds.

Undead
A zombie variation of a horse. It does not appear to be tameable. It has only one texture and cannot equip anything. On the texture they have more of a leather pack than a chest. It can only be spawned through third party editing programs at this time. Currently, it seems to be completely passive if spawned. This might change when it is officially released. These mobs have their own audio. They make several ominous moaning sounds.

Foods
Note: it takes 20 minutes for a newborn foal to grow into an adult.

Taming
To tame a wild horse, approach it and right click on it with an empty hand. You will climb on top of it, and will likely be thrown off. After a few attempts, it will allow you remain on it and will give off heart animations. At this point you can dismount it by pressing the Sneak key and place a saddle on it.

The chance of successful taming on the first try is 0%. Every failed attempt increases this chance by 5%. This means that on the second mount the player has 5% chance of success; on the third try, 10% etc. Taming can be sped up by feeding the horse any of the approved foods when you are standing next to it - see column "Taming prob." in the table above.

Riding
Once you have tamed a horse and put a saddle on it, you can control it with standard directional controls and the mouse. Horses can be made to jump, and holding the jump key allows you to charge your jump. Horses are not affected by Jump Boost beacons. Sneaking causes you to dismount, as does going in water deeper than two blocks.

Horse jump bar

Empty:

Full:

When you mount a horse, the hunger bar and oxygen bar are replaced by the horse's health in survival or adventure mode. It uses a slightly different heart texture than the player's health bar. The experience bar is replaced by the horse jump bar, which gauges how high you jump. The maximum jumping height, which is reached when the bar is fully charged as you release the spacebar, depends on the horse you ride. It seems to range from about 1.2 to 5.1 blocks high. As each horse has different statistics, it is difficult to gauge the maximum distance but testing has revealed that certain horses can jump distances of 12 blocks.

You can use any item while riding a horse, including drinking or throwing potions, activating doors or redstone devices, or using chests, crafting tables, and furnaces. You can also break and place blocks, use a sword, and fire arrows.

When running forward, you will start at a slow walk and build to a speed faster than sprinting. You will automatically run up any one block high slope. You are three blocks tall while on a horse, but you can ride under 2 block tall areas, causing your head to pass through blocks. This causes suffocation damage, except when passing through non-solid blocks. You are slightly wider than one block, and are unable to walk through one block wide gaps. However, due to the horse's length, you can run over any one block gap. It also appears you can run across a two block gap at high speeds, but this does not seem to work all the time.

Virtually all horses appear to be able to outrun a minecart when both are moving at full speed. Some seem to be quite dramatically faster than a minecart. This can be combined with speed potions and the Nether to make the horse easily the fastest practical way to travel in Minecraft (around 130 m/s Earth-equivalent in The Nether). The speed of a horse is irrespective of its outward appearance. In order to find a fast horse, you have to tame a few and compare them.

Horses are very slow moving backwards, and about as fast as the player when moving sideways. Therefore, turning around is quite preferable to moving backwards or sideways.

Breeding
Horses are bred by feeding them wheat (only while you're riding them), or golden apples. Horses cannot be bred if they're wearing armor.

The new foal takes one of the colors and one of the markings of its parents the majority of the time. On rare occasions however, an offspring may be produced with a color or pattern that matches neither of the parents.

The offspring may possess qualities superior to its parents, such as having more health, better speed, or jump strength.

Offspring healthbar will always shows 26 hearts even though its real health is lower (and never exceeds 15 hearts). This glitch can be fixed by reloading the world.

Trivia

 * When you give a donkey or mule a chest, then remove the saddle, the chests are still there and you can still access the inventory
 * May or may not be a bug
 * Just like other baby mobs, you can spawn foals with the spawn egg by right-clicking on a horse. The foal will be the same breed as the horse. The only way this process differs from other mobs is that you need to be mounted on the horse to spawn foals.
 * Every foal spawned this way follows the horse you spawned it from like a normal baby mob.
 * An interesting trick you can do while riding a horse is to get on your horse, press F1 on your keyboard, drink a potion of invisibility, and press F5. It will look like you are the horse, instead of riding on the horse.
 * This can be used to trick other players into thinking that you are a horse, making this a great mob disguise.
 * This also works with pigs, but you can only control it with a carrot on a stick, which other players can see you holding when you are invisible.
 * It is possible to jump over wooden fences while riding a horse.
 * It is possible to "double jump" by falling off of a block above the ground, and then jumping before landing.
 * Even though the skeleton and zombie horses look like undead versions of their counterparts, they are not treated as undead. A wither will attack them as if they were any other living mob.
 * Running over a TNT Minecart landmine, even a "," will result in the horse dying, but the player being undamaged until they hit the ground.
 * Horses are quite possibly the best method of travelling long distances overland; they can attain speeds of at least 11 meters/second (660 blocks per minute, nearly 40 km/hour), navigate hilly terrain very easily, jump ravines with near-100% consistency, and require no infrastructure except at the end (they are not good in jungles or some forests though.)
 * Untamed horses can despawn when far enough away from the player.
 * Same goes for foals bred from tamed horses.
 * It seems that all pure fourth generation and beyond horses are brown and white.
 * It is currently possible to get tamed undead and skeleton horses via use of NBTedit by changing a horse's variation number to 3 and 4 for undead and skeleton horses respectively.
 * If you are riding a horse and you leave from a server the horse will duplicate.If this happens with a donkey/mule and a chest, the contents of the chest duplicate as well.
 * A horse, like most mobs, can ride in a minecart. However, their size makes it nearly impossible to destroy the minecart and get them out without killing the horse.
 * It is impossible to enter a Nether portal while on a horse. It is possible however, to sometimes enter the portal on the horse and then press shift to escape, sending the horse to the nether on its own, like dogs. Additionally, you can dismount, walk the horse into the portal with a lead, and remount. Or you can just nudge the horse into the Nether.
 * Sometimes a horse will bend its head down as if to eat grass, regardless of what block it is on.
 * If this occurs while the horse is in water, the horse will stop swimming and sink to the bottom. This means that drowning could be an issue if you are crossing an ocean or a biome where water will freeze.
 * In the Minecraft credits it gives credit to Dr. Zhark for the Horse.
 * It seems that you can not anger an enderman by looking at it whilst on a horse.
 * The Buckskin coloured horse is the only horse that has a white blaze no matter what markings it receives.
 * If you open the horse's panel while it is leashed, the leash will overflow outside of the horse model