Extremely annoying habit.

[TicTac]

My horse absolutely loves his food. So much so that I,ve nick named him Mr Dyson as he will hoover up almost anything you put under his nose. However, he has the very annoying and frustrating habit of either flipping his bucket or rooting around in his food like a pig does and chucking it over the edge.

In the field he has a bucket in a tyre but he puts his foot in the bucket and flips it out :-( and in the stable he has a corner manger but again, somehow manages to get the bucket out. At the moment I tip his feed directly onto the grass but come winter I dont really want to do that. Any ideas on how to minimise wastage? Any suggestions greatly appreciated

 

[whisp&willow]

my youngster is the same with buckets on the ground. i put them in a tyre (like you do) she still manages to scoop out food with her foot onto the floor.

i just supervise her eating and shout at her when she goes to paw. that seems to nip it in the bud.

either that or in winter then i would put down a bit of rubber matting in the field where you are feeding, and tip the feed out either onto the rubber matting or onto a small pie of hay.

 

[AprilBlue]

don't use buckets at all then

IN THE STABLE:
for water buckets:
you can use an automatic water bowl where there is this button and your horse pushes it with his nose and it bowl fills up with water itself so you wont be wasting any water and your horse will be hydrated all the time

for feed buckets:
build a feed manger or even buy one and fix it to a corner of your stable

If he still chucks his feed around, fix an anti weave grill on his stable door. that way he won't be able to chuck out that much of his feed out.

IN THE FIELD:
use a water trough

if you have a shelter in your field, just put the hay(or whatever there)

 

[Littlelegs]

Just leave him to it, won't do any harm if he eats from the floor. Or if you want, give two buckets. The first with a tiny handful that he can tip over & mess with. Then the second when he's more focused on his food. Or a bucket that hooks on the door/fence, & either you keep hold of it, or put another bucket on the floor to mess with, or both.

 

[TicTac]

my youngster is the same with buckets on the ground. i put them in a tyre (like you do) she still manages to scoop out food with her foot onto the floor.

i just supervise her eating and shout at her when she goes to paw. that seems to nip it in the bud.

either that or in winter then i would put down a bit of rubber matting in the field where you are feeding, and tip the feed out either onto the rubber matting or onto a small pie of hay.

I like the rubber matting idea. Might give that a try.

Thanks everyone for your tips and advice

 

[MrsMozart]

Mine all gete fed from the ground (not buckets), no matter what it is - hard feed / hay / haylage.

The only exception is my horse that has a haybar, otherwise she drags the hay over, wees on it, then gets grumpy because she has nothing to eat

 

[Ella19]

Tip it onto hay?

Pop a heavy brick in his bowl, it will a stop him throwing it, pawing and b slow GIS eating.

 

[Ella19]

* his