How to Feed Horses in Rust [Rust Horse Guide]

Feeding your horses in Rust is quite easy, with a few simple steps you can easily feed your horses.

All you need to do is simply drop any food item like any vegetables, mushrooms, or meat in front of horses and they will automatically eat.

But do not leave so soon, our article will cover important topics about horses in Rust, in this article, we will cover topics such as why we should feed horses. How do we earn scrap with horses? What is the best item to feed them?

What Food Should We Feed Our Horse?

Each horse will have a stamina bar which can be seen when riding or examining it there are two levels of this bar max stamina and available stamina. The max stamina determines how much available stamina the horse has when sprinting.

When sprinting the available stamina will quickly decrease while the max stamina slowly decreases if you stop sprinting or return to a light jog the available stamina will increase back to the max stamina.

The max stamina also affects the max speed of the horse so a fully fed horse will be around 7 faster compared to the horse's default speed when purchased. In total, you can naturally increase your horse's speed by around 14 by just feeding it.

You can refill the max stamina bar and heal the horse by feeding it with cooked meats like cooked bear meat or raw meats, crops, packaged food, fruit, or berries. You can feed the horse by dropping food items in front of its head and the horse eat automatically. You can get food and water in Rust in various ways.

Additionally, horses can eat grown crops without needing to pick them up making rivers a great place to stop by to feed your horse. Thanks to a large number of crops naturally growing rivers are the best food resource to refill the stamina of horses.

Each food in Rust has different values, this is the same with horses. Each food gives different stamina and health values to horses.

Let's take a look at the value of food for our horses.

Items	Adds Stamina	Adds Health
Potato	8.0	12
Can of Beans	6.4	8
Chocolate Bar	6.4	4
Cooked Bear Meat	6.4	10
Pumpkin	6.4	20
Corn	4.8	12
Cooked Fish	3.8	10
Granola Bar	3.8	10
Cooked Wolf Meat	3.8	10
Pickles	3.2	10

For healing the horse the best foods include Pumpkins, Black Raspberries, Cooked Chicken, Blueberries, and Potatoes. Horses are also capable of taking Healing Tea to quickly regain a large chunk of health.

I would recommend heading over to the Bandit Camp and purchasing pickles for a cheap price, horses get a moderate amount of stamina and health back from pickles making them a cheap and great way to maintain your horse's health. This method is the best option especially if you are thinking of setting up a horse farm for scrap farming.

Where to Find Horses in Rust

In Rust, horses are rideable, passive animal and they can be often found along roadsides and near monuments in all biomes except the snow biome and can be purchased from Ranches.

We will cover the horses' utilities, safety, and location of the stables. The stables can be found by opening your map and locating the Ranch or Large Barn with a trader icon that sells horse equipment the Ranch is typically located close to the coastline and is an open layout with a small red house that is enterable it might also host a bunker entrance allowing you to quickly get down into the tunnel system.

The Large Barn which has the horses indoors is located more inland compared to the Ranch and the Large Barn both feature the same number of horses and utilities making them identical in usefulness.

If the server's map size is smaller you might only find a single stable within the map which might be the Ranch or Large Barn both types of stables can spawn on bigger maps such as the size of 4500.

Once you have arrived the stables will be surrounded by a safe zone, make sure to put away your weapons otherwise you will be targeted for 30 seconds which can be seen by the red crosshair icon in the top right of your screen. If you shoot your timer will increase to 1 minute and if shot by a turret will max out at 5 minutes.

Both types of stables will host a trader and phone outside on the wall you can't find any other utilities like a recycler or a repair bench since the stables are a safe zone which means you cannot take or deal damage to other players even if there's a sniper out of range. You can still die from fall damage or the turrets.

The safe zone will also mark you as an enemy after sleeping there for around 10 minutes however if you do die other players can not loot your items meaning you can return and take your stuff without worry. Don't bother fighting back if you are marked as an enemy as the turrets are immune to damage, so just leave the area and wait it out.

You can buy horse saddles from the Stables Shopkeeper in these barns for 75 scraps and claim the horse by attaching it to the horse of your choice.

How to Keep Our Horses Safe and Well-Fed in Rust

Over time the max stamina will naturally decrease and reach zero which will result in the horse's death. You must continue to maintain the horse's stamina or use a Hitch & Trough to keep them healthy and fed as long as you have put enough food within it. And if you throw the dung of the horses into the Composter item and turn it into Fertilizer, you can sell it for scrap in Bandit Camp and get rich.

The Hitch & Trough will be required if you decide to put your horses in your base or inside the compound. But one thing you should keep in mind is that horses die faster with a roof over their heads, but if you are going to scrap farm, it would not make sense to put them in your compound because your enemies can kill them.

If you will only use them as a mount to roam it's recommended you have a basic compound to keep your horse to avoid having them indoors or players stealing it.

When examining the horse you can find four equipment slots for crafted or found attachments to improve your horse's effectiveness speed or protection these items are:

• Basic Horse Shoe
• High-Quality Horseshoe
• Wooden Horse Armor
• Roadside Horse Armor
• Saddlebag

ITEM	DESCRIPTION
Saddle Bag	The saddlebag contains six extra slots to include resources and items essentially acting as a moving chest you can pair this up with a maximum of 4 saddlebags to provide a total of 24 extra slots. However, each bag decreases the maximum speed by 3.6 kilometers per hour so having multiple will make you an easy target to shoot. The saddlebag is a default blueprint and requires a level 1 workbench to craft
Basic Horse Shoes	Next, we have the Horse Shoes, the Basic Horse Shoe will increase the horse's speed by 5.4 kilometers per hour and cannot stack with others it is a default blueprint and requires a level 1 workbench to craft.
High-Quality Horse Shoes	The high-quality horseshoe will increase the speed by 9 kilometers per hour and cannot stack with others it is primarily purchased at stables or fishing villages for 40 scraps but can also be crafted as a level 2 workbench with a total of 420 scraps for the tech tree or 75 scraps with researching on Research Table.
Wooden Horse Armor	The Wooden Horse Armor, will considerably slow down your horse's max speed by 10.8 kilometers per hour but provides 25 projectile protection to the horse and 35 projectile protection to the rider the Wooden Armor also comes with built-in a saddle bag to provide an additional six inventory slots it is a default blueprint and requires a level 1 workbench to craft.
Roadsign Horse Armor	Finally, The Road Sign Horse Armor compared to the Wooden Horse Armor is a considerable upgrade and protection. However, it has a massive reduction in speed of 21.6 kilometers per hour with no additional saddlebag when equipped the horse and rider both have 50 projectile protection it's recommended to only use this armor combination in Rust on a Thoroughbred horse with a Horse Shoe attachment to reduce the speed penalty.