Zombie Horse
passiveTameableOurs, not the game's own: how a zombie horse behaves. Same on Bedrock v1.26.40.05 for weight, group, health. Checked 2026-08-22, and how
Added InOverview
The Zombie Horse is a passive mob in Minecraft, which means it will never attack a player and simply goes about its own behaviour.
Look for the Zombie Horse across the Overworld; it is tied to Plains, Sunflower Plains, Savanna, Savanna Plateau, and 2 other biome types.
What sets it apart is its behaviour: never attacks anything and never burns, and it takes a saddle once you have ridden it enough.
With 25 HP (12.5 hearts) on its bar, killing one rewards 1 to 3 experience.
It was first added in 1.6.1 and has been a fixture of Minecraft ever since.
For many players the appeal of the Zombie Horse is companionship: once tamed it becomes a loyal helper rather than just scenery.
Spawning
Zombie Horses spawn in Plains, Sunflower Plains, Savanna, Savanna Plateau, Snowy Plains, and Windswept Savanna.
Because it appears across 6 different biomes, it is one of the easier mobs to track down, and heading to any of them should turn one up before long.
Rolls into the monster group of a handful of flat biomes rather than into the horse group.
Left alone far from any player, wild zombie horses eventually despawn, so use a name tag if you want a specific one to stick around.
With no attack to worry about, the Zombie Horse is something you gather rather than fight, and since it does not breed, every one you want has to come from a fresh spawn.
Where the Zombie Horse spawns
Plains, Savanna, Savanna Plateau and Snowy Plains are where it stands strongest: weight 5 on the monster list and 1% of it, arriving 1 at a time. There it shares the list with Creeper at 100, Skeleton at 100, Slime at 100, Spider at 100 and Zombie at 90 and 3 more, 515 weight together, of which 5 is zombie horse. That is the whole list.
| Biome | Weight | Share | Group |
|---|---|---|---|
 Plains | 5 | 1% | 1 |
 Savanna | 5 | 1% | 1 |
 Savanna Plateau | 5 | 1% | 1 |
 Snowy Plains | 5 | 1% | 1 |
 Sunflower Plains | 5 | 1% | 1 |
 Windswept Savanna | 5 | 1% | 1 |
Drops
The Zombie Horse drop table breaks down like this:
Every kill yields 2 to 3 Rotten Flesh.
In terms of experience, each kill is worth 1 to 3 XP orbs.
Rotten Flesh is the reason to seek them out, and since they do not breed, each one has to be found rather than raised.
Since every item here is guaranteed, the only variable is quantity, which makes this mob a dependable, low-variance source of what it carries.
As a harmless mob, the Zombie Horse is best gathered opportunistically while you explore, and there is no danger in collecting from it, so it rarely justifies a dedicated trip.
| Item | Count | Chance | Conditions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rotten Flesh | 2 to 3 | always | Looting III up to 6 |
Zombie Horse attributes
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
 Size | 1.396 x 1.6 blocks |
 Eye height | 1.52 blocks |
 Tracking range | 10 chunks |
| Follow range | 32 blocks |
 Health | 25 points |
 Experience | 1 to 3 |
Where the Zombie Horse lands, it has company: the witch, whose 26 health has nothing we list nearer than this 25.
Zombie Horse: 0.09% of its category, rank 51 of 52
On 6 of the 66 biome lists (6 spawn entries in total), and 0.09% of every spawn the game puts in its monster group is a zombie horse.
A zombie horse averages 2.5 Rotten Flesh a kill on the rolls Minecraft Java 26.2 makes for it, before Looting, which puts a full stack of 64 Rotten Flesh at 26 kills.
| Item | Average per kill |
|---|---|
 Rotten Flesh | 2.5 |
How this average is worked out
| Weapon | Attack damage | Full swings | Swings per 64 Rotten Flesh |
|---|---|---|---|
 golden sword, wooden sword | 4 | 7 | 182 |
 stone sword | 5 | 5 | 130 |
 iron sword | 6 | 5 | 130 |
 diamond sword, golden axe, wooden axe | 7 | 4 | 104 |
 netherite sword | 8 | 4 | 104 |
 diamond axe, iron axe, stone axe | 9 | 3 | 78 |
 netherite axe | 10 | 3 | 78 |
Behavior & Combat
In the field, never attacks anything and never burns, and it takes a saddle once you have ridden it enough. It belongs to the zombie family, which is where its rotten flesh comes from.
It notices a target from 32 blocks, 10th of 88 for follow range, with the zombified piglin its nearest at 35.
Because it never attacks, you are in no danger from it directly; the Zombie Horse simply goes about its routine.
You can tame the Zombie Horse: ride it until it stops throwing you, then saddle it.
The Zombie Horse cannot be bred, so the only way to get more is to find them spawning naturally in their home biomes.
Once prepared it can be ridden, which makes it as much a means of transport as a creature to study.
Bottom line: tame one and the Zombie Horse stops being an obstacle and becomes an asset you will want to protect.
Zombie Horse commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /summon minecraft:zombie_horse | Puts a zombie horse on the block you are standing on. |
| /give @p minecraft:zombie_horse_spawn_egg | Hands you the zombie horse spawn egg, so you can place zombie horses where you want them. |
| /kill @e[type=minecraft:zombie_horse] | Removes every zombie horse that is loaded around you. |
Entity id minecraft:zombie_horse, spawn egg minecraft:zombie_horse_spawn_egg.
Zombie Horse farm
A zombie horse farm copies the rule the game already uses for zombie horse spawns. Rolls into the monster group of a handful of flat biomes rather than into the horse group.
Plains is where the zombie horse has the biggest slice of the roll, 1% across the 6 lists the zombie horse appears on, and that is the biome to build a zombie horse farm in.
Each kill is worth 1 to 3 experience and up to 3 rotten flesh, or 6 with Looting III, which is the number to scale the zombie horse farm against.
Zombie Horse version history
Minecraft 1.6.1 brought the zombie horse in on 28 June 2013, 13 years of zombie horse by now.
4 other mobs here came with it: the horse, the donkey, the mule and the skeleton horse. 29 of our 88 mobs are older than the zombie horse, 54 are younger.
Every zombie horse figure on this page is read from Minecraft Java 26.2 as it stands today, not from the version above.
What Zombie Horse sounds like
Turn subtitles on and every zombie horse sound names itself in the corner of the screen. These are the 5 lines a zombie horse can put there, and you can play any of them yourself with /playsound minecraft:entity.zombie_horse.ambient master @p.
| Sound | What you hear |
|---|---|
| entity.zombie_horse.ambient |  Zombie Horse cries |
| entity.zombie_horse.angry | Zombie Horse neighs |
| entity.zombie_horse.hurt | Zombie Horse hurts |
| entity.zombie_horse.death | Zombie Horse dies |
| entity.zombie_horse.eat | Zombie Horse eats |
Advancements that need Zombie Horse
2 advancements ask for zombie horse by name, and each of them counts other mobs too.
- Monster HunterKill any hostile monster
- Monsters HuntedKill one of every hostile monster
