Can You Tame Animals in Hytale? Complete Guide

# How Taming Works

As of the February 11th pre-release update, Hytale now has a basic taming system. Hold an animal's favourite food in your hand and feed it to tame it. Once tamed, the animal won't run away from you unless you hit it, and will occasionally greet you.

Tamed animals can be:

• Petted with an empty hand
• Fed their favourite food to keep them happy
• Milked, sheared, or mounted depending on the animal type

There is still no breeding system in vanilla Hytale. You can't feed two animals to make them reproduce. Baby animals found in the wild stay babies forever - they don't mature into adults. These features are planned but not currently implemented.

# What Food Tames Each Animal

Each animal has a specific food required for taming. Using the wrong item does nothing. Here's the full list:

• Cow / Calf : Cauliflower
• Sheep / Lamb : Lettuce
• Chicken / Chick : Corn
• Pig / Piglet : Brown Cap Mushroom
• Rabbit / Bunny : Carrot
• Boar / Boar Piglet : Red Cap Mushroom
• Turkey / Turkey Chick : Corn
• Horse / Foal : Carrot
• Camel / Camel Calf : Wheat
• Goat / Kid : Apple
• Ram / Ram Lamb : Apple
• Desert Chicken / Desert Chick : Corn
• Mouflon / Mouflon Lamb : Apple
• Skrill / Skrill Chick : Chilli
• Warthog Piglet : Wild Berries
• Mosshorn : Potato
• Penguin : Any fish (e.g. Salmon , Raw Fish , Catfish , and many more)

The Feed Bag still works as a universal lure for attracting animals to a location, but taming requires the specific food listed above.

# How to Tame Horses

Horses are the primary mount in Hytale, found roaming Zone 2 (Howling Sands). With the taming system, you can now keep a horse permanently.

1. Gather Carrots - Horses and Foals are tamed with Carrots
2. Approach with Carrot in hand - Hold the carrot and feed the horse to tame it
3. Mount with F - You can mount any horse without a saddle. The horse responds to movement controls and sprints at high speed

Tamed horses won't flee when you dismount, solving the biggest frustration of the old system. You can still build a stable to keep them organized and safe from predators.

# Essential Tools for Animal Management

Before heading out to catch anything, craft these items at your Farmer's Workbench :

# Feed Bag

The Feed Bag is your primary tool for attracting animals to a location. Hold it in your hand to create an attraction radius, or place it on the ground inside an enclosure to passively lure animals into your pen.

The Feed Bag works as a universal lure for small animals and babies. It's crafted using 10x Wheat, 5x Any Vegetable, 5x Any Fruit, and 10x Essence of Life at a Tier 1 Farmer's Workbench.

# Capture Crate

The Capture Crate is the most powerful tool for animal transport. It lets you instantly capture a small animal and store it as an inventory item - no more pathfinding nightmares trying to lead creatures across long distances. Click once to capture, click to release at your base.

Craft it at a Tier 2 Farmer's Workbench using 4x Any Wood and 50x Essence of Life.

This forces a specific strategy: hunt for juvenile animals in the wild, crate them, transport them home, then tame them once they're safely in your enclosure.

# Building Escape-Proof Enclosures

Even with taming, enclosures remain essential for keeping your animals organized and protected from predators. A single-block fence is not enough - animals and predators can jump over standard height barriers. Your enclosures need to be at least two blocks high to guarantee containment.

Key building rules:

• Two blocks minimum height - Prevents animals jumping out and predators jumping in
• Solid floors - Replace natural grass with tilled soil, wood planks, or stone. Grass floors can spawn hostile mobs inside your pen
• Lighting throughout - Place torches or lanterns to prevent mob spawns. Aim for one light source every 8 blocks
• Proper gates - Use doors or fence gates you can quickly open and close. Consider double-gate airlocks for large herds

Small animals like chickens and pigs can technically be held by one-block fences, but two blocks is safer against predators.

# What Animals Drop

Tamed and captured animals provide renewable resources essential for mid-game progression:

Zone 1 - Emerald Grove:

• Cow : Milk (bucket interaction), Raw Beef, Light Hide
• Sheep : Wool Scraps (shears), Light Hide, Raw Wildmeat
• Chicken : Eggs (passive laying), Raw Chicken, Feathers
• Pig : Raw Pork, Light Hide
• Rabbit: Light Hide, Raw Wildmeat
• Boar: Light Leather, Raw Wildmeat (defensive - will attack if provoked)

Zone 2 - Howling Sands:

• Horse: Light Hide, Raw Wildmeat
• Camel: Light Hide, Raw Beef
• Goat: Light Hide, Raw Wildmeat
• Ram: Light Hide, Raw Wildmeat

All livestock passively drop Poop, which you can collect to craft the Fertilizer Bag for accelerating crop growth. This makes animal husbandry directly tied to farming efficiency.

# The Fertilizer Loop

The most important resource from animals is manure. Applying it to farm plots as fertilizer dramatically increases crop growth speed. Faster crops mean more harvests, which generate more Essence of Life , which you need to craft more Feed Bags and Capture Crates.

This creates a circular economy:

• Farms produce Essence for capture tools
• Capture tools secure animals
• Animals produce manure
• Manure boosts farms

Even if you can't breed animals to increase herd size, maintaining a few tamed livestock purely for manure production is worth the enclosure investment.

# Chicken Coops

For chickens specifically, you can craft a Chicken Coop - a dedicated structure that houses chickens and collects eggs automatically. This is more efficient than keeping chickens in a standard pen.

Chickens in coops lay eggs passively, and there's a chance eggs can spawn chicks. Place the coop in a protected area and check it regularly for eggs.

# Step-by-Step Farm Setup

1. Establish your crop farm first - You need Essence of Life before you can craft any capture tools. Grow the taming foods you'll need: Cauliflower, Lettuce, Corn, Carrots, and Mushrooms
2. Build Farmer's Workbench to Tier 2 - Requires 50 Essence, 5 Wheat, 5 Lettuce, and 5 Softwood Trunks (also known as Beech or Aspen Logs)
3. Construct animal enclosures - Two blocks high, solid floors, good lighting, secure gates
4. Craft Capture Crates and Feed Bags - Make multiple crates since you may find several baby animals per trip
5. Hunt for baby animals in Zone 1 - Look for herds with juveniles. Crate calves, lambs, piglets, and chicks
6. Release in enclosures and tame - Release animals from crates, then feed them their specific taming food to tame them permanently
7. Harvest resources - Collect manure for fertilizer, milk cows with buckets, shear sheep for wool, gather eggs from chickens

# Current Limitations

The Early Access build still has some gaps in animal systems:

• No breeding - Feeding two animals does not produce offspring
• No baby growth - Captured babies stay babies forever
• Basic taming only - Tamed animals can be petted, fed, milked, sheared, or mounted depending on type, but there's no command system (sit, stay, attack) yet
• Taming breaks on hit - Hitting a tamed animal causes it to flee from you again

Community mods like HyTame add breeding mechanics if you want the full farming experience. The underlying engine supports these features - they're just not enabled in vanilla yet.

For more animal details, browse our complete mob list or check out farming tools to expand your agricultural operations!