Horse behaviour - bully?? Or play??

[fleabag]

I'm worried that my youngsters field playmate is turning into a bully!! We have a small herd of 3 (used to be 4 but she left which probably unsettled things!) it consists of a mare who's top dog, a cob gelding who appears to be bottom of the pecking order and has the same owner as the mare and my rising 3 year old gelding. In the past couple of months my gelding and the cob have been very playful when they are first turned out ie chasing each other play fighting ect. Recently however I have noticed that this behaviour seems to be more aggressive rearing up at each other becoming vocal, kicking out, striking out, and the cob seems to be very persistent and my horse tries to move away! His neck is becoming very moth eaten and scabby looking bless him and not to mention his rugs! My question is do I separate him from the other two? I always like the thought that they can play ect is this typical behaviour or is it becoming more serious? Yay! Thanks for reading!! any ideas would be much appreciated!

 

[Enfys]

Bullying or Playing?

Hmmm. It depends if your horse is genuinely trying to run away and the cob persists in coming after him, or if they are simply playing a rather rough version of chase! My colts run around a tree playing tag!

What do the ears and mouth tell you? Play faces are completely different to "Get out of my way squirt! Too late... take that! " faces. OK, this is a "Beat it goat!" face, but there is no mistaking the threat.

These colts are playing:

 

[Bikerchickone]

My filly used to frighten the life out of me playing with her same age young buddies up until she was about 3.5! I think you have to use your own judgement to decide if this is a problem or not. It may be that your 3 year old is attempting to challenge the other gelding for top male slot. The mare has it easy because every herd has a lead mare who isn't challenged by the boys, so by default she's it. The fact that your boy is growing up may be where the different behaviour has come from. My filly took on the lead mare in her group and it caused an awful lot of problems for a few weeks.

Is your lad bigger or smaller than the other gelding? Does the other gelding move away when he's there, or the other way around? My girl rapidly grew bigger than her 'lead mare', a 13h NF pony and eventually took over from her, maybe this is what's happening, or maybe it's just play. Might be worth looking at pics of herd behaviour to help judge which it is so you can decide how to deal with it.

 

[fleabag]

Thanks for your responses!
He's about 15.3/16hh and the cob is 14hh and seriously heavy! I have trouble reading his faces as he is soooo chilled out I have never even seen him put his ears back apart from fighting/play fighting with this cob! He does generally play back ie they stand facing each other biting faces and necks then it builds and my boy either trots/canters off with bob the cob hanging off his rug tail flap! The mare sometimes appears to separate them usually by chasing my boy off and she definately means it lol, as she and the cob are bestest friends! The pics off them rearing are typical of what they do, the other day my boy was trying to drink from the trough whilst bob was constantly biting his bum/tail and I have seen him try and stop my horse from getting to the water! The queue at the gate to come in is mare first,then mine and the cob hangs about at the back! I'm thinking maybe I split the field up a bit and see if my horse takes any interest in playing over the fence, if so my guess is he is a willing particepent in horse gladiator!!! But maybe just a bit of a softie!

 

[Honey08]

My 17h youngster (4) and our 13.2 cob used to "play" like that. They too seemed not to know when to stop, and were hanging off each other's rugs and headcollars etc. They were friends too, and would happily graze together and groom at other times. I put grazing muzzles on both of them for a few months, which got them out of the habit, and they didn't do it that much when I took them off.