Youngster very bucket aggresive

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ace123

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My youngster is 2 and a half. I have owned him since he was 2 months old. ( taken from his mother but thats another story) . He was unhandled and i worked very hard and spent alot of time building up his trust. He was very poorly when i got him home and never been fed hard feed. He didn't have a clue. He refused mares milk replacer and basically the vet said he either has the will to live or he dies.
Anyway i left all sorts of feed in buckets all round his stable to tempt and and after 4 days he decided to eat. Thats when the agression started.
He is fantastic in almost every other way. Farrier, lead, groom, rug, load and travel ect.
THEN feed time. He is awful. You cannot go near him. If fed in the field he guards his bucket swinging his bum, lashing out and eats like his is starving.
If fed in the stable he kicks the walls, goes for the horse next to him and will lunge over his door if anyone walks past, ears flat back, whites of eyes showing and teeth at the ready.
He's all sweetness when i take feed to him and backs up when told but the minute he's got his bucket watch out. As soon as he's had the last mouthful he's back to his lovely self again.
Is this behaviour due to his poor start or being a little sod?
I just leave him alone to eat now as even just standing near him upsets him and he seems to be getting worse.
What would you do?
 
What a pain... I probably can't be of any help, but how many times a day is he fed? Perhaps splitting his feed up into five or six tiny feeds every day might help so he gets used to the fact that he's not going to be deprived... I don't know, I'm probably talking out of my arse.

Hope you get it sorted though, sounds like a really difficult problem!
 
Nice idea but as i work that would be impossible.
Its not out of hunger as i have 3 on 7 acres with plenty of grass and some nights he won't even come in. Him and sec a devil bugger off and i can't catch them.
 
iam not going to be much help either... if he is good at everything else, and you can leave him alone when eating, I wouldn't worry too much. Can you block out his stable neighbours so he can't see them so has no threat to protect his bucket? If no threat, then he has no reason to behave like 'a starved beast'?
Well, sorry not much help, but well done on bringing him up from such a poor start.
 
It's his bad start in life. You know exactly when it started and he is no problem in any other area, including putting the bucket down and making him back up and wait for it. I think you should simply feed him in a closed up stable where no person or horse can disturb him and leave him alone until he has finished. It's only minutes, so I can't really see a problem with leaving him be to eat his tea in peace.

You are lucky and clearly you have done a very good job with him. I have heard of MUCH worse problems than yours in orphaned foals.
 
Thanks.
i do now leave alone now.
He is so good in all other ways even my farrier compliments me on how well behaved he is and how good he looks so i must of done something right. lol
 
Thankyou.
He has been very hard work and i am proud of him. I've had horses for 20 odd years but never a younster so i have had alot of advise and never been too proud to ask for help when needed.
I will continue to leave him alone.
Was told to stand with him whilst eating and if he started i was to take his feed away and to keep doing this until he learnt to behave.
I have ignored this advise as i feel taking his feed will make him more protective of it
 
If you were determined to crack it, then I think the answer would be to start with one handful of food. When he takes that nicely, put it in a bucket and then take it out of the bucket and hand feed him it. When that's done quietly up it to two handfuls. When you've got to maybe ten handfuls, quietly fed from the bucket handful by handful, I'd go back to one handful and get him to eat that without you picking it out of the bucket, and then increase the amount each time he is quiet. Eventually I'd stop holding the bucket and put it on the floor, by which time he should be eating quietly out of the bucket. Then I'd move a little bit away and back again. Then increase the distance, and so on and on and one. It could take months! Or even years!

Or you could just accept that when he started to eat hard food he was desperately unhappy, had lost his mother, had to eat stuff he was not ready for at his age, and the whole food thing is simply too fraught for him to cope with unless he is left alone. Eating must remind him of being on the point of dying - don't forget that a foal in the wild that loses its mother is lunch for the next passing lioness. He thought he was going to die back then, and maybe eating makes him feel that insecure all over again.

You've clearly done a great job with him, forget the critics. I hope you have fun breaking and riding him in future.
 
I have had a similar problem. Just feed him and leave him. He will mellow a bit but it will always be in him. Well done in ignoring that advice. He needs to realise that it is his food and nobody is going to mess him about,so he doesnt need to try and scare you away once he has his feed. Lancelotwas very big and very fast in his stable. Initialy when putting his feed over the door I would keep a stick betwean him and the bowl as i put it in. The stick was not to threaten but if he lunged at me he would have to go past the stick. They dont like doing that sort of thing. Gradually he progressed ,thanks to kind considerate yard staff, to merely attacking the bucket, then stepping back and waiting, eventually no stick ,and just the odd scowl if he felt that the waiter should have gone by now. HOWEVER it was always in him and if you didnt treat him with respect he could be dangerous.
 
I would catch him, hold the lead rope and feed him. When he is finished, tie him up and take bucket away.
 
My horse also has a bucket food aggression issue....he has a bit of a sketchy past, but from what I can gather he was shut indoors in a large barn type environment with lots of other horses as a baby and had to fight for his food. He was 'rescued' by his previous owner in a pretty bad state. I then bought him as a rising 4yo and I've had him for 5 years. Despite being well fed he still has major issues with his bucket feed, same as you describe, he will thrash around the box and god forbid someone leads a horse past as he will rear up throwing mouthfuls of food at said horse!

He has got a lot better with me over the years, I can go into the box while he is eating, but he is uncomfortable with this and as it obviously does stress him out I leave him be. If he can hear anyone else talking etc ioutside his stable it sends him off on one.

In terms of managing him, I always make him stand at the back of his box and make sure he is behaving in an unaggressive manner before any feed is put in, and most importantly I tip the feed out of the bucket onto the floor and leave the empty bucket in the stable. For some reason this is far less stressful for him. Might be worth a try?

Others have advised me to hand feed him out of a bucket before but I have never tried that, I honestly dont think it would be safe. He's a lovely kind chap in all other respects but really does lose the plot over his feed so I rather keep him at arms length and leave him quietly.
 
We bought a rising 4yr old mare who had a chequered history and was very 'proud' of her feed and hay. Fortunately at that time we were on a livery yard where there was a walkway behind the boxes with a metal grille separating the mangers from the walkway. We could not get into the box with the mare if there was a bucket feed there and we had to ber very careful when she came in to hay. We used to leave everything ready for her put her into the box and go and stand behind the metal grille. She just had to get used to us being there. In the summer we fed her and her field companion, who was the boss, over the wall out of a bucket. Again if she wanted to eat she had to put up with us holding the bucket. We kept her until she was pts at 24 and by that time she would bring a mouthful of the first hay of the winter to 'share' with us. In fact she was much improved after the 1st year. It just takes patience and the right combination of circumstances, we were lucky with the metal grille.
 
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