How to Put a Saddle on a Horse in Minecraft

Exploring the world in Minecraft can be pretty hard when you solely depend on your in-game character. Large distances can take forever without alternative transportation, so befriending and saddling up a horse in the game is an ideal route.

Unfortunately, horses can be tricky to find and tame.

Additionally, Minecraft doesn’t have a crafting recipe for saddles. Instead, the only way of acquiring this item is through mob loot, fishing, or treasure hunting.

There are various vital steps to consider before you can actually hop on a horse and travel with it. Most typically, players get saddled horses on a mid to late-game status, which is when they have the necessary resources.

Let’s discuss how to put a saddle on a horse in Minecraft, exploring the whole process, including methods of taming horses and obtaining saddles.

Minecraft Horses

Horses in Minecraft are passive mobs that can serve as transportation. There are about 35 colors of horses in the game, with no rarity value over them.

Like most farm animals, horses can eat grass, hay, and some fruits.

Habitat

You can find horses in plains and savanna biomes. Typically, they appear in herds of 2 to 6 horses, with no chance of spawning alone. Horses from the same herd follow similar appearance patterns.

You can also find horses in villages. There’ll be animal pens with horses whenever a village spawns with a stable area.

It’s common to find baby horses in a herd; they constantly follow adult horses.

Taming A Horse

Taming a horse is necessary if you want to put a saddle on it. Trying to equip a saddle on an untamed horse won’t bear any effect.

Whether they’re in the wild or on villages’ animal pegs, Horses have similar behavior. They’re passive, even when receiving damage from the player. Moreover, you can attach a Lead to any horse, even untamed, which is helpful to avoid them drifting away.

Like with any other farm animal, you can breed horses. To do so, you’ll need to tame them first.

Taming a horse isn’t overly challenging. There are two methods of doing so:

• Feeding the horse and mounting.
• Mounting the horse without providing food.

The quickest method of taming a horse is by giving it the best food. It’s essential to understand that horses in Minecraft have a “temper” meter, which defines their behavior towards the player. By giving food to the horse you are enabling positive temper points.

The temper defines how close a player is to tame the horse.

For instance, when horses spawn, they have a “temper” level of 0-100; whenever you mount on a horse, a threshold sitting somewhere between 0-99 is set on the horse’s “temper” level.

You’ll tame the horse when you improve its “temper” level past the defined threshold.

Giving food to a horse is an efficient way of raising its “temper” value. Let’s see the table of food alternatives you can give to a horse and their respective “temper” worths.

• Sugar (+3 Temper)
• Wheat (+2 Temper)
• Apple (+3 Temper)
• Golden Carrot (+5 Temper)
• Golden Apple (+10 Temper)

So, the first step to taming a horse is mounting it, which will set a “temper” threshold. Reaching past the threshold will cause the horse to befriend you; you can speed up this process by feeding the animal with the ration alternatives above.

Giving food to a horse that you didn’t mount yet won’t cause it to be tamed.

You can also tame a horse without providing any food to it. The “temper” status of a horse upgrades by five whenever you mount it. So, doing this enough will break the threshold anytime, causing the horse to bond with you.

A few hearts will pop up on the screen when you successfully tame a horse, indicating that the animal bonded with the player.

Finding A Horse Saddle

Even after taming a horse, you won’t be able to control it. After bonding with the animal, you can stay mounted in it without trouble. But, similarly to Llamas, the horse will keep wandering randomly with the player on top.

For the player to have control of the horse’s movements, they’ll need to equip the animal with a saddle.

Once you have a saddle, get near a tamed horse with the item in hand. Then, press the “use” button; you can perform this command by right-clicking your mouse on PC. After doing so, the horse will display a saddle on its back.

Apart from horses, you can also put saddles on striders, donkeys, mules, skeleton horses, and pigs.

Saddles are uncommon items; you won’t be able to find them during the early game. Let’s discuss the best locations to search for saddles.

Treasure Hunting

Saddles commonly appear in chests inside old ruins, dungeons, mineshafts, etc. The chances of finding a saddle in these places are:

• Dungeon – 28.3%
• Ancient City – 16.1%
• Desert Temple – 23.5%
• End City – 13.3%
• Jungle Temple – 12.8%
• Nether Fortress – 35.3%
• Stronghold – 2.4%
• Village Weaponsmith’s chest – 16.2%
• Village Savanna House chest – 11.3%
• Village Tanner’s chest – 17.3%

Fishing

An alternative to getting saddles in Minecraft is through fishing.

When fishing, players have a slight chance of getting treasures. In addition, the game allows for fishing rod enchantments, which increases the chances of pulling good loot from the water.

Without enchantment, a basic fishing rod has a 0.8% chance of pulling a saddle from the water. These prospects can increase by enchanting the fishing rod with the “Luck of the sea” perk.

The Luck of the sea enchantment has three tiers. The chances of fishing a saddle for each tier are:

• Tier 1 – 1.2%
• Tier 2 – 1.5%
• Tier 3 – 1.9%

Trading

Master leatherworkers in villages might sell saddles. They have a 50% chance of selling the object in exchange for six emeralds.

If you’re having trouble finding a village containing a master leatherworker, you can try to force an unemployed villager to become one. Placing a cauldron in the same vicinity as an unemployed villager causes them to become leatherworkers.

Mob Loot

You can also get saddles by slaying specific mobs.

On the Nether dimension, a Strider can spawn with a zombified piglin riding it. In this case, the Strider will have a saddle above it, which has an 8.5% chance of dropping. To improve these prospects, enchant your sword with “Looting”.

The highest chance of achieving a saddle is by slaying Ravagers, the final bosses of raids. Upon saying one, there’ll be a 100% chance of it dropping a saddle.