Moody and rude ned when it comes to food

Rupert2006

Well-Known Member
Joined
27 April 2006
Messages
83
Location
Lincolnshire
Visit site
I was wondering if anyone had any advice - I have had my ned for about 7 months now - he is a 14 year old TB. He was in poor condition when I got him and lost a lot of weight - he is now in much better condition and has a nice round belly - however, he has developed a really agressive attitude about food. when I tie him up I let him have some hay if I am mucking out and he pulls faces at me everytime I go past him and threatens to bite - but he never has - and when he gets his tea he is relly agressive and pulls major faces and when i tell him to go back he does as he is told but the ears are back and faces are being pulled! if I go into his stable to fill up his water whilst he is eating he swings his head around and glares at me with ears back. He wasn't always like this and I am wondering if he is trying me on - he is very greedy when it comes to food and will eat anything and is always looking for treats - I was juts wondering what other people thought - he is also starting to pull faces when I put his rug on too - I am wondering if it is just the winter blues - he is fine and happy in a ll other respects. thanks for reading!
 

matthew

Well-Known Member
Joined
26 May 2006
Messages
1,364
Location
Lincolnshire
Visit site
Maybe he had food withheld previously so is nervous about when he will be fed again next. You would have thought that he would have settled a bit by now though!
No advise on how to stop it though sorry!
 

Ludi-doodi

Well-Known Member
Joined
20 August 2004
Messages
1,451
Location
West Yorkshire
photobucket.com
I've had my boy over 3 years now and he does this to me, other horses, other people. He came with that attitude to food and still has it. Don't know what to do either. In the stable I put his food as far away from his stable mate as possible but sometimes he still turns round an launches at poor Murphy - who just runs to the opposite side of his stable!
 

Nari

Well-Known Member
Joined
27 September 2005
Messages
2,840
Visit site
When I got my lad as a youngster I was warned to leave him well alone when he had a feed because he could be umpleasant about it. Sorry but I can't be doing with that!

My solution took a little bit of time but it worked & was very simple. His feed was put in a bucket that I held, if he threatened me I left & took the bucket with me but if he was polite he got to eat up with no interruptions. No smacking or shouting & I wouldn't irritate him by talking or petting him while he was eating either but he did have to tolerate me being there if he wanted his food. He caught on very quickly (he has faults but stupidity was never one of them) & now anyone can do anything in his stable while he's eating - you may get the odd sugarbeety nuzzle though!

I later did the same taking his feed away if he got stroppy with other horses when he was eating. It was quite interesting when I put hay out for him & my rising 3yo the other week - the youngster was getting all over-excited & trying to grab mouthfuls from the barrow while Jim politely walked alongside waiting for it to be put down. Suddenly LU got a bit cocky & tried bucking at the barrow - Jim looked horrified then quickly chased LU off with a good bite to his bum before trotting back to me whickering & nuzzling up like mad. I SWEAR he was saying "it wasn't me, I've told him off, please please please don't take my hay away!". LU has also been very polite about the hay barrow since then although I did have to mend a big tear in his rainsheet & he flinched for a couple of days if I patted him on the bum!
 

tashyisaudrey

Well-Known Member
Joined
21 August 2005
Messages
925
Location
Devon
Visit site
Horses can be strange! My mare will let me come up to her while she eats, change rugs or brush or whatever. anyone else, and she tries to double barrel them and pull faces. This includes dogs and goats. But no its only me -thats allowed perhaps because she knows I'm the one that brings it, rather than take it away?
 

debs_07

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 January 2007
Messages
123
Visit site
some horses are just like that .. my mare can be moody sometimes when it comes to food ... as long as they arnt bitting .. i think leave them to it
x
 

spike123

Well-Known Member
Joined
14 June 2006
Messages
2,585
Location
Kent
Visit site
Spike has always been a moody *** when it comes to food.With me I get the pulled faces but no more than that .With others though he has been known to bite them.I went into his box the other day after he had been fed for a few days by other people for me and he contemplated nipping me but was met with a very loud mum and he retreated to the back of his box where he proceeded to stamp his feet in temper.I refused to put his feed down until he stopped pulling faces and he has since been fine and not tried to bite again since.However unless you know a horses past then chances are that at some point they have had to fight for food.
 

spooks

Well-Known Member
Joined
20 November 2005
Messages
600
Location
Suffolk
Visit site
when we got otto he used to pull faces , stamp his feet etc when you gave him his food, i used to stand in his space so he got used to it,didnt touch him or anything..he always pulls faces no matter what your doing though! changing his rugs is just laughable,he stamps his feet,does silly little bucks etc but as soon as the rug is on he is fine about you doing it up..he has definately got worse since the summer..when i was at the yard today ,the YO was getting her 2 in and otto was hogging the gate as usual so i told her to just let him through...her 2 came out..no sign of otto..she said she opened the gate and he didnt want to come out so i went down myself , opened the gate and out he walked! dopey horse, he is very particular about people!
 

MagicMelon

Well-Known Member
Joined
6 November 2004
Messages
16,174
Location
North East Scotland
Visit site
One of mine is like this as well. He's fine with hay, but pretty nasty over his feed. In my boys case he was kept on his own as a 2 and 3yo so I can only imagine he always had feed on his own (I have other horses around). He was very messed up with the whole herd hierarchy thing as well because he'd never been allowed to learn with other horses as a youngster. So I think this all relates to his aggression over his feed. I just dont argue with him - I keep to a routine so he knows EXACTLY when and where he gets his feed and he has improved a lot. He was really nasty to begin with but now he's fine. He still makes faces at me sometimes and Im always wary in case he kicked me but I know now he wouldnt mean to, he just mistakes me for another horse sometimes!!

Just be careful, stick to a routine with food - never argue with the horse over it or withold it. And I found when I gave him food Id stay with him for increased periods so he got used to me being in his feed space rather than just being the food giver.
 

Sal_E

Well-Known Member
Joined
11 January 2002
Messages
2,483
Location
Kent
Visit site
Personally, I don't like the idea of Nari's approach, although not disputing the fact that it worked in that instance - perhaps if the horse has 'unjustified' reasons for being moody then witholding the food may work, but if there's a historical reason for the aggresiveness, I think witholding could make it worse. The horse is 'protecting' his food, his greatest fear being someone else getting it before he does - therefore surely taking it away confirms his fears are correct & the risk is REAL. I think it's humanising the horse too much to expect him to work out that he gets penalised for pulling faces.

If it were me, I'd accept that this is just the way my horse is (after all, it's not a handling issue that NEEDS sorting) - I would just avoid putting him in a situation where he has to think about protecting his food. Can the food bucket be put in his stable so when he enters it's already there - i.e. he doesn't have to have it presented to him. With regard to tying him up with a haynet - is that totally necessary? Does he need the net? In my mind, the feed bucket issue is a non-issue, but the haynet one could be more of a problem as you may have to handle him whilst he's eating hay (I certainly wouldn't be filling up water buckets around him when he's eating his dinner - I think that's unfair with a horse who feels threatened).

If you do need to work around him when he's eating hay (i.e. tied up outside the stable) then probably you do need to try to desensitise him for both your sakes. The most important (crucial) things is that you never react to him - don't ever yell/growl etc at him for it as you are compounding the negative situation. Personally, I'd walk part him a zillion times, TOTALLY ignoring any bad behaviour (unless of course he actually DID nip you, you'd have to give him a smack for that). I'd start by doing it within his comfort zone & gradually increase the 'pressure' hopefully slowly enough that he lost intest in you. If you could get reasonably close without him reacting, I'd give him a treat as a reward. You basically need to try to change it into a positive thing - remove the pressure from the situation. If anyone in his past has punished him (even verbally) for pulling faces, they are compounding the negativity of the situation for him.
 

Llwyncwn

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 November 2006
Messages
3,461
Location
Muckheap
Visit site
What an interesting thread. I was given Monty in November (you may remember the urgent colic thread). As he has now become 'well' in himself, gets attention and is groomed each day ... he too has started to get slightly aggressive with stable mates and humans alike during feed time. He also occasionally threatens me in the stable when Im handling him. Perhaps this is down to boredom as he is coming to the end of 3 months box rest, but still, I am quite wary of him. Other people on the yard seem to think he has become quite jealous of me handling other horses.
 

Nari

Well-Known Member
Joined
27 September 2005
Messages
2,840
Visit site
Sal-E in Jim's case he had no cause for being like this with his food, I'd bought him from his breeder & he would never have been starved of left to fight for food. He is however a dominant horse & I felt a lot of this behaviour was him being over-assertive. As such I wanted it stopped before it spread to other areas. Maybe with a horse that had a long-standing reason for defending it's food then this wouldn't work though I think I would still try it.

I can't agree that a horse cannot associate it's behaviour with food being taken away, but it must be instant & consistent. At the end of the day it's not so different to them responding to aids when ridden, eg you put your leg on then when the horse oes forward you take it off. If I said that if he threatened over his food so I didn't feed him tomorrow I'd agree that was humanising too much but if horses couldn't understand that their behaviour caused a predictable reaction from us then they'd be untrainable.

IMO it is unacceptable to have a horse that can't be handled while eating. Sometimes if I'm in a rush I don't have time to wait but maybe more importantly what if someone else has to handle him & doesn't know that he isn't safe to be near when there's food? Or if someone walks past the stable & gets lunged at? Also I bet that, unless he's very high in the herd ranking, he manages to eat in the field when other horses are around. There is no way I want my horse seeing me as lower in the herd than him - that's the start of real problems!
 
Top