Horse Problem - Aggressive at Feeding Time - Horse aggressive toward other horses when hay is put out
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QUESTION: Hi. I hope you can help me. I have a 13-year-old Welsh D gelding, that I bought recently. He was very bolshy when I got him, but after lots of natural horsemanship training techniques he is much easier to handle, and will follow me round the school, etc. He still tries to be in charge every now and then, and is quite a cheeky chap.
The main issue I have at the moment is his interaction with other horses in the field when I give them hay each morning. He gets very aggressive and chases the other horses away with his ears right down. I worry that he is going to hurt the other horses. I don't really know what his background is and wonder if he has had to fight for food in the past.
Please could you let me know if this is normal behaviour as he is the first horse I have owned, and I don't really know what to expect. Please could you also let me know if there is anything I can do to stop him being so aggressive.
I don't really want to keep him on his own as I don't think it is fair on the horse. Thanks in advance for your help.
REPLY: Hi. Thanks for writing. This is common behavior in horses that have been "starved down" at some time in their past. It's a "concentration camp" mentality that is left over from days when there (literally!) wasn't enough food to go around. And it then became a "survival of the fittest" situation. He learned then to fight for food, or not survive. It's a sad result of someone in this horse's past just not feeding him enough nor letting him have 24/7 access to grass/hay like most horses are designed by nature to live.
Let me direct you to a link on my web site that talks about what to do with this kind of horse now:
So, as you read there in that link, especially for putting out hay, put out the hay in several piles, but very far apart from each other. This way he cannot possibly dominate all the food resources; he'll pick a pile and the other horses will clear off to the other piles and peace will prevail. Make sure you put the hay piles far enough away from each other that he won't be tempted to dart back and forth between them to try to "own them all."
One more link on my web site I wanted to direct you to -- it's an exercise you can do to start working on your horse's attitude about this, in general, in a very structured lesson format -- in this exercise, it will be your horse that is the one haltered in the lesson:
Hope this helps and good luck to you there!
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