Hi, my horse Sophie has the newly developed aggression with hay in her stall. With grain she is perfect. If she has hay in her stall you can’t go totally in her stall nor can you even attempt to put her halter on. She pins her ears raises her head, goes to bite you and of course tries to pin you in the corner with her butt and threatens to kick. How can I correct this bad behavior. Otherwise she is the sweetest and I LOVE her so much. Please give any advise you can. Thank you,
Mary Ann G.
A long time ago I had a “lesson” in safely handling big cats. As in safe for you and safe for the cat. The secret? Vinegar, mixed with water, in a spray bottle, a solid squirt in the face at any sign of aggression. Cats HATE the smell of vinegar. Years later a friend had a dangerously aggressive horse at feeding time. You could have beat this horse until your arm fell off and it didn’t change a thing. We figured the horse had previously been beat on to the point where he figured out you couldn’t “really” hurt him.
A small spray bottle mixed 50/50 Vinegar and water and within a week the horse was respectful and “safe” to feed. From that point on just a shake of the bottle, and a NO, kept him respectful. Feed/stall aggression, IMO should never be tolerated. The vinegar/water is safe, not dramatic and very effective.
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Thank you Patty I will definitely try that. I use 50/50 apple cider vinegar to clean her feed bucket and have a spray bottle at the barn already of it. She likes the taste of it but spray in the face she might not enjoy that. I will try anything that doesn’t involve hurting her.
Is there any real reason to suspect this horse has ever been abused? Unless there is, my first choice would be a 6’ whip.
Kicking is never acceptable. Period. End of Story. The most reliable way I’ve seen to cure a kicker is a well planned use of a whip. Have it when you go in the stall, when your horse goes to kick, hit her, HARD. If she kicks in response, hit her AGAIN. Rinse & repeat until she gets the picture.
The odds of you actually hurting this horse are slim, the odds that she will hurt you are much higher.
When someone comes here and says their horse is kicking, biting, whatever, and they quickly bring up not hurting the horse, I worry more about the horse being a spoiled brat than having been abused.
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I would use the whip on the body before I would spray a horse in the face with vinegar. It’s fine to spray a tiger because you don’t card if the tiger gets headshy. Not a great idea for a horse.
IME if a horse is acting up like this in one situation then there is a 99.9 % chance the horse is not really in fact being respectful the rest of the time. I can almost guarantee that this mare is pushy or oblivious much of the rest of the time but it is only here with food that the owner notices.
I would say a total revamp of ground work behavior under they eye of a good groundwork trainer, and after the basics are there, go into stall with longe whip and make mare stand off from hay until she drops all signs of aggression.
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She is showing you that over time she has developed a complete lack of respect and sees you as she would a herd mate. Forget the vinegar and take a dressage whip in with you and MAKE her get back and stand until you release her to eat hay. It may take a while and you will need to do it every time you enter the stall when she has hay.
Be firm, but not abusive. If you don’t think you can do this right, get help from someone who can.
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This is really very dangerous behavior. You need some experienced help to nip this in the bud.
Frankly, I wouldn’t worry too much about hurting her–she obviously isn’t too worried about hurting you. However, going in there with a whip, unless your timing is excellent, could result in some serious escalation on her part.
But someone needs to send a lasting message to this horse now that this is very unacceptable behavior or you will have a real problem on your hands. I can tell you from personal experience that having one you can’t go in a stall with is a complete pain.
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What do you classify as “hurting” her?
Honestly, if I have a horse that is trying to pin me in the corner so they can cow kick me in the head, I don’t give a rats @$$ if I hurt them … because they are about to hurt me!
What you describe is extremely dangerous. It can kill you, and that is no exaggeration.
If you know the horse is going to act this way, have a long whip in your hand and use it. Correct her as necessary and get her to back off. Keep yourself safe at all costs.
Time to show her some “tough love” and teach her that she is crossing boundaries that aren’t to be crossed.
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While she definitely needs boundaries and to be trained to respect you, I wonder if she’s getting enough to eat.
Most horses (without metabolic issues) need free choice access to grass or hay 24/7. It is simply how their bodies work.
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Inappropriate & DANGEROUS !
Get some professional help before someone is hurt !
This behavior should not be taken lightly EVER !
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Of course, if you are capable of doing it, AND the horse respects a whip, by all means, whip her a$$. And of course try to do this without getting yourself hurt. HOWEVER, if you are timid, or afraid of hurting her, the vinegar does work. AND it won’t make her head shy because you are not swinging anything towards her. Just make sure you have a spray bottle that will shoot a ways away. The second she pins her ears, squirt her and say NO! LOUD!
As others have said, revisit her manners on the ground. She must respect you. No rubbing, pushing or invading your space, ever. Stall aggression is something that usually develops as a horse is allowed to disrespect the handler.
Specifically for the hay, I would do a training session like this.
Put a flake of hay in round pen or paddock where there is room to move.
Enter with horse in rope halter, ten foot rope, you with longe whip.
Practice approaching the hay, taking a bite, the leaving on your terms.
Any aggressive behavior send her backwards fast for ten steps. Use whip and halter as needed. Horse gets to eat only when being pleasant.
Do this several days in a row until she is perfectly agreeable
In the meantime just feed her and don’t interfere while she’s eating in her stall.
When you feel you have manners instilled in the paddock or roundpen try same routine with halter in the stall which is more dangerous as less room for you to get put. Make horse back up and wait for you to drop hay then make her stop eating a few times.
Hurt is a broad definition
Obviously no one is saye to physically injure your horse.
But when a horse ramps up the aggression you need to respond as another horse would and they absolutely bite and kick each othef in these situations.
If mare is threatening to bite and kick you, you need to respond at a heightened level.
That’s the reality of horses.
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Hi ilovemysophie, welcome to COTH.
After reading your posts, I sense that you have a lower level of experience in the daily care of horses, and want to say you are wise to seek assistance. The behaviour you describe is dangerous, and must be modified.
My first step would be to evaluate her manners. How is she to lead, tack, groom etc? Is this a general respect/space issue, or only related to feed? Think carefully, does she follow instruction, or have you learned to modify your instructions to accommodate her actions? Does she push or drag you around? Does she stand quietly? How do you turn her into her stall? Is she required to turn to face you, stand quietly to have halter removed, and wait your permission to “stand down”?
If she is generally well mannered, what happens when you provide enough hay, that horse is never without? For two days, have hay constantly available. I do not mean feed 4 x per day, I mean feeder is FULL 24 hrs. per day, hay constantly available during turnout. Then ask yourself if there is a change in behaviour. Before I am willing to ramp up my response on an otherwise well behaved horse, I want to know how hunger impacts on behaviour. No, the behaviour is not okay, even if the horse is hungry, but it will change my response and management plan.
Should aggression continue, I again recommend a trainer who can walk you through the steps required to modify this behaviour. Attempting to “get after her” if done poorly, and inconsistently can actually increase rather than decrease her aggression. You need to be able to read the horse, and know when and how to discipline. Note: I said discipline, not punish. I would not send an individual with a lower level of experience into the stall of an aggressive horse to “sort things out” with a whip. I fear for your safety, and envision an injury.
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A very admirable thought and goal but I can assure you, Sophie doesn’t have the notion. I am not advocated “hurting” her but you might need a better idea of what actually will “hurt” a horse; after all, she weighs roughly 1000 lbs.
As many have suggested, this behavior needs to be addressed as it is very dangerous for you and anyone else who goes in her stall. Seek help and don’t be afraid to walk away if you don’t like what you see. Having said that, this won’t be fixed by bribing and petting her. It will take firmness and clear, well timed corrections.
Be careful, have fun with her and get help building a strong partnership with her (and always remember you are supposed to be the herd leader, all the time, everywhere) 
You think spraying acetic acid in your horse’s face is an appropriate way to modify her behaviour ?
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Yes, trying 24/7 hay might be a good experiment as actually we don’t know anything about the horse’s feeding schedule. And I agree OP should not be in the stall with a whip until they have figured out boundaries in a safer space with the mares head controlled so she can’t turn around and double barrel the OP.
Spraying anything in a horses face is just a bad bad idea. And absolutely unneeded. Plus then OP next summer will be writing COTH to ask why her mare is now panicked about fly spray baths and anything aerosol in her vicinity. Bad idea.
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OP, as others have said, this problem is probably not limited to just the hay-in-stall situation. Do you have any very experienced horsepeople at your barn who could watch you work with this mare, to identify behavior patterns that you may not be picking up on? Any time you have to move away from your horse, or walk around them because they’re in your way, or anytime they’re allowed to rub their face on you or otherwise intrude on your personal space --as a general rule, these are ways that they express dominance over you. Whoever gets forced to move their feet is the lower ranking herd member. You may think, oh no big deal, she didn’t pin her ears or anything–but you’d be wrong to ignore that stuff. Each of those situations is a little test of hierarchy. When we allow that kind of behavior, we are very clearly telling the horse that he is in charge. The overtly aggressive, very dangerous stall behavior you describe usually happens because the horse is fully convinced it ranks higher than you. It’s behaving toward you the same as it would if some junior herdmate tried to steal some hay.
A novice horseperson should never try to fix this kind of dangerous behavior on her own, especially not in a confined space such as a stall. This horse could wheel and kick in an instant. And leaving the door open behind you may invite the horse to bolt out when you start hitting it. Please heed the above suggestion of working on this in a roundpen, with control over the horse’s face.
The only horse I ever had in my whole life was one I bred and he behaved badly (to a lesser degree) over food.
It coincided with a bout of ulcers as a young horse. He was Irish, the sweetest boy ever, but for this.
Getting after him made no difference. He got over it eventually…probably when he felt better.
