feeding behaviour

Question
I have owned Cole now for only 4 months. He is gentle and has no vices
But come feeding time he is VERY 'protective' of his food when with other horses. He is ok with humans - but other horses he is very aggressive with.
How do I teach him to behave, or understand he doesn't need to fear he won't get his food?


Answer
Hi Janice,

Thank you for your question.  It's hard to say what may be at the root of your horse's eating aggression, but I'm a strong believer that this type of behavior is more instinctual than situational.  It is natural for horses to be protective of their food to a certain extent especially in a herd situation where your horse may not be at the top of the pecking order.  In a closed herd, it would be normal for the lead horse to have first dibs on the good stuff and the rest of the horses would get whats left...depending on how far down they are in the pecking order.  

Having fed in herd situations, I've been the one standing in the middle of the field playing referee, trying to ensure that each horse gets his own meal and his fair share.  It's great exercise but not the best use of resources.  Of course, the easiest way to calm the feeding situation down for your horse would be to isolate him at feeding time...but that may not necessarily be an option for you.  I worked with one customer who fed in a herd situation but needed to feed individual rations, so we opted to feed each group using feed bags.  This turned out to be a time and resource saving tool as we had hoped, but we also discovered that it completely cut out all of the fighting and shifting around the horses did at feed time.  They each waited patiently for their feed bag and wandered off to their own little corner to eat without bothering with any other horses.  I'm not sure how well this will work if one horse has a feed bag and the rest don't but it may be something you want to consider.  The only difficulty that we encountered was feeding high fiber feed that was beet pulp based to one particular horse.  She suffered a very mild choke...so we opted for a soya hull based high fiber feed and she was fine.  

It may not be feasible to completely eliminate the competitive nature of the horse during feeding time, but perhaps this will help calm everyone down with the reassurance that no other horse can get to their meal.  I hope this is useful to both you and your horse.

Thanks, Corlena