[!IMPORTANT] GECKOLIB IS REQUIRED DEPENDENCY FOR THIS MOD.
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A complete overhaul of horse progression, travel, breeding, ownership, and mounted gameplay for Minecraft.
Icy’s Better Horses transforms horses from disposable transport into true long-term companions. The mod expands nearly every part of vanilla horse gameplay: movement, breeding, genetics, ownership, bonding, utility equipment, mounted controls, traversal, and multiplayer riding.
Once a horse is fully tamed, it becomes permanently tied to its rider through an ownership system.
Owned horses gain access to advanced control mechanics designed to make them feel reliable and persistent instead of temporary.
Press P to whistle for your horse.
Your owned horse will respond and return to you, even at range.
The whistle system is multiplayer-safe and correctly tied to the owner’s UUID.
Pressing the whistle key also clears previous command states like Stay, returning the horse to normal follow behavior.
Open the command wheel with: R (can be changed in configs!)
Available commands:
Every horse now has a persistent Bond stat ranging from:
0 → 100
Bond represents trust, training, and familiarity between rider and horse.
As bond increases, the horse gains measurable stat bonuses.
Every 20 bond levels improves:
At maximum bond, horses can significantly outperform vanilla movement values while still remaining balanced within hard stat ceilings.
Using a Name Tag on a horse grants:
+10 Bond
Feeding Golden Apples grants:
+2 Bond
While mounted, pressing P now opens a full horse profile screen.
If the player is not mounted, the whistle still activates normally.
The info screen displays:
All stats are shown with progress bars and exact values.
Displayed in:
blocks per second
Maximum attainable bonded speed:
25.52 blk/s
Displayed in:
blocks
Maximum attainable jump:
9.50 blk
Displayed in:
HP
Maximum health:
30 HP
The breeding system has been completely rebuilt around persistent genetic traits.
Every horse now stores:
These values persist through saves, multiplayer syncing, and breeding.
Every horse now has a biological gender:
This includes:
Gender is synced, saved to NBT, and visible through the info UI and HUD systems.
Two horses of the same gender cannot breed.
Attempting to breed incompatible horses will:
This system applies specifically to horse-type entities and leaves vanilla animal breeding untouched.
The mod introduces 15 persistent horse breeds, each with biome spawning rules and breed-specific coat pools.
Breeds include:
Donkeys, mules, skeleton horses, and zombie horses use species placeholders instead of true breed types.
Foals born from two different breeds inherit:
(mix) flagMixed-breed horses are visibly marked in the UI.
Breeds are now tied directly to realistic coat pools.
Every breed only spawns with specific vanilla coat + markings combinations.
Examples:
Existing horses from older worlds retain their current appearance and automatically receive an inferred breed.
Wild horses now spawn according to biome regions.
Entire natural spawn groups share the same breed for more believable herds.
Examples:
Found in:
Found in:
Found in:
Found in:
This creates region-specific horse populations across the world.
Foals inherit stats from their parents through a controlled inheritance system.
Inherited stats include:
The child receives:
max(parent stats) + randomized bonus
Values are capped at the mod’s maximum attainable limits, preventing infinite breeding escalation.
Vanilla horse travel has been heavily redesigned to remove friction and terrain frustration.
Horses:
Mounted travel no longer completely stops at every shoreline.
While mounted:
This prevents horses from constantly snagging on leaf blocks.
Double-tap:
W
to enable Auto-Ride.
While active:
Pressing any movement key disables Auto-Ride.
Mounted movement has been reworked for smoother handling.
Changes include:
Mounted mining speed penalties were also drastically reduced.
Two players can ride the same horse simultaneously.
Useful for:
The Upgraded Saddle expands horse utility far beyond vanilla functionality.
Features include:
Placing an Ender Chest into the upgraded saddle grants access to the player’s global Ender Chest inventory directly from the horse.
Holding an upgraded saddle while looking at a horse displays an in-world HUD:
Craftable horse hooves improve environmental traversal.
Effects:
Horse hooves can also receive:
Frost Walker
At high movement speeds, ice generation was specifically optimized to avoid performance problems.
The Stabilizer is advanced survival equipment for dangerous terrain.
During major falls:
Designed for mountain travel and cliff traversal.
The Horse Medkit automatically activates when horse health drops below 50%.
Applies:
This provides emergency survivability during combat or accidents.
The Hitch Post allows owned horses to be tethered to a fixed location.
Restrictions:
Horses can reject unauthorized riders.
If a non-owner attempts to control the horse:
This prevents accidental horse theft in multiplayer environments.
The mod includes a configurable JSON file:
betterhorses-common.json
Configurable systems include:
Items can also be placed into dummy mode, allowing them to remain as decorative models without gameplay functionality.
The mod adds:
Persistent NBT-backed horse data
Synced multiplayer horse traits
Breed-based spawning
Spawn-group inheritance
Coat restriction systems
Advanced breeding inheritance
Custom GUI systems
Server/client mixins
Translation support for:
Icy’s Better Horses is one of my first large-scale modding projects, and the mod continues to evolve with every update. Some models and textures are still being improved as I continue learning 3D modeling and animation workflows. Community feedback, testing, suggestions, and contributions are always welcome.
