Feeding Frenzy

With winter approaching and the drought conditions we’ve recently experienced in some areas, hand feeding our horses becomes necessary.

Here’s a few tips and tricks that can make it safe for you and fun for your horse during this daily interaction.

In fact playing games at feeding time is vital to maintaining or gaining ‘alpha’ status with your horses/s.

Firstly, remember that the alpha horse always gets to the food first and guards it with purpose – all the time!

So, if you are to be the alpha horse, don’t allow your horse to come into your personal space (about the length of a training stick or swinging string) while you are carrying the feed into the paddock or placing it in the feed bin.

It doesn’t take them long to get greedy and dive for the feed bucket as you try to get through the gate.

Even if you feed over the fence (the easy or safe way out with a very dominant horse or a whole herd) use your stick to keep them back until the food is in position.

When feeding more than one horse, try to place the feed in the same place and feed bin so the horses know who goes where in the pecking order – this is particularly important when there’s more than a couple in the herd.

Keeping the order teaches the horses to wait near their bin rather than feeling like they have to fight for their food every time.

Its amazing how soon they catch onto where they need to be which reduces the anxiety around feed time.

If you have a large group of 5 or more horses, you may even need to put out an extra bucket as the alpha horse will probably finish first and the extra means the others don’t miss out.

Same with the hay, make sure there are a few more piles than horses and that they are well spread out – some horses learn they can ‘guard’ 2 or 3 piles within ‘charging’ distance.

Sometimes people ask me if its OK to do things with their horse while they’re eating? My answer is ‘yes’ but you may need to start by just being friendly first until your horse sees you as no threat to their dinner.