Agressive behaviour by a gelding and possessive behaviour over a mare.

[Alita]

Hi everyone, I know this has already come up a bit but I’m at a loss for what to do and wondering if anyone has any suggestions.

I agist at a small property where there are currently only a couple of horses. I recently purchased a new horse (gelding) and the other gelding on the property absolutely hates him! This gelding is super posessive of one particular mare in the next paddock. I used to have a mare and although he was fine with her when “his” mare wasn’t close, if “his mare” came near the fence he’d actually lunge and kick at my mare. Fortunately my mare was no push over and between the two of us we convinced him to mind his manners and let us get through the gates most of the time without incident. This gelding also has a history of being very dominant towards other geldings he has previously been paddocked with (biting/kicking.) At the moment all the horses are private paddocked, with horses in next door paddocks.

Back to my new horse. It’s a whole new ball game- major bad behaviour escalation. Now extremely over possessive of the mare, severe separation anxiety when she isn’t close and crazy agressive behaviour towards the new horse to the point where this gelding was hurting himself on the fences and didn’t care- just continued throwing himself into the fence over and over trying to get through.I’ve never seen anything like it. Scared me to be honest, I though it was going to break a leg before I could get over there and catch it.

It started when “his mare” walked away from the fence on the day mine got there and the resident gelding completely lost it and started throwing himself at the fenceline trying to get into the paddock with my horse (and I assume beat the crap out of him.) The gelding was getting zapped by the electric fence over and over but would jump back, then throw himself at the fence again.

To stop him from really hurting himself, (or mine as well if he knocked the fence over or jumped it) we had to move him into the next paddock where he now screams, paws at the fences and paces obsessively whenever “his mare” isn’t by the fence in the next door paddock. I can’t even leave the property, as if I try to walk down the laneway past his paddock to the front gate, the gelding throws himself through the electric fencing to get into the laneway to go after my horse. My new horse has shown zero aggression towards the gelding and doesn’t even seem to particularly like the mare that all the fuss has been made about. He also gets seriously stressed out when walked anywhere near the gelding which is not good for if you’re about to take the horse out of the property (and unavoidable due to the way the agistment is set up.)

I don’t own either the mare or the gelding, so am very limited with what can be done. The gelding will need to return to the paddock next to mine due to the nature of the very small agistment property and paddock set up, but if he does either he or my horse is likely to end up severely injured. Keeping them in far away paddocks is just not possible long term though. I’ve never seen the gelding mount mares. He can try to be dominant at times on the ground, but no aggression towards people at all that I’ve seen.

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions on how to convince them to get along to the point where one isn’t going to really hurt himself throwing himself into fences? (Short of moving the mare which isn’t possible or having the gelding hormone tested.) I honestly don’t know what to do about this as I’m not convinced this is something that will resolve itself with time. Thanks.

[Marla_100]

The only two things that will change the situation is 1) Move your new horse to another farm or 2) Owner of bad

gelding moves him away to another farm.

This is why many boarding barns do not keep mares and geldings close enough to interact.

What does the farm owner plan to do?

[Highflyer]

I agree that there’s not anything you can do other than alternate turnout times so that only one of them is turned out. And even that is likely not a long term solution. While geldings and mares are generally easier to deal with separated, this is extreme.

[Alita]

Yes it is. I’ve never seen behaviour that extreme before, even from him. Unfortunately agistment is very limited in the area. To move would mean relocating the horse to be about an hour’s drive away. No one’s going to want to do that unless it’s a last resort. There’s no barn/stables with which to do alternative turn outs. It’s a basic paddock type agistment where everyone manages their own area. The property owner is not involved in paddock rotations.

I guess I figured as much, just thought I’d ask if there was any training or behavioural management type practices people had tried to reduce aggression and anxiety levels in a horse that behaves in this way. The mare’s owner has kindly offered to try switching the mare’s paddock with another horse so he can’t sit with her directly over the fence soon and see if that can reduce the gelding’s possessive behaviour by putting a little more distance between them. (Hopefully he doesn’t just become clingy with the switched horse instead which is also a mare unfortunately, but not one he’s been as attached to in the past. The one he’s obsessing over has always been the one he’s been most attached to even when my old mare or the one that’s going to be switched has also been in adjacent paddocks in the past.) Other than that, not sure what else can be done from the sounds of it.

[Marla_100]

If the bad gelding’s owner is on board they may want to try some calming type supplement. Don’t know if they would

help. Something like a magnesium supplement or Smartpak has several to try.

I’ve seen this problem several times at boarding facilities. Some geldings just can’t be kept near mares and other

geldings. Even after being gelded, sometimes nature takes over and the gelding gets possessive. A new gelding

brought onto the farm is sometimes all it takes to suddenly make the old gelding go crazy. Playing around with

re-locating turnout paddocks is about all you can do if you plan to stay there.

[WildLittleWren]

I agree your options are to move the horse, or try switching paddocks with another horse although I have a feeling NO ONE is going to want to be right next to this gelding. Good luck OP I feel for you. I currently am in a similar situation in that there is a very aggressive gelding out at my barn and we have to rotate. But we have stalls the set up to do it. Does it create more work? Absolutely, but at least we have the option at my current barn. If the farm wasn’t set up in a way we could do it this way, I would probably move, even though I love my current facility and just about everyone there.

[Alita]

Thanks Maria, I’ll ask them if they’re open to trying a supplement or not.
WildLittleWren- No one else has a problem with him at the moment as the remaining mares are not ridden horses so they don’t need to be moved out of their paddocks often and the gelding doesn’t attack either of them that I’ve ever seen. If someone had to move it’d probably be me as although I’ve agisted there a long time, my new horse been there the least amount of time and things weren’t as bad before he got there (although my gelding has done nothing himself to trigger this apart from being there, but that’s life I guess.) I’d probably have to give up horses if that happened as I’m not sure I could get the training he needs done if I also had to factor in 2+ hours of travel per day (or 4 on those double feed/rug change kind of days) Feeling pretty devastated and stressed out that this has happened TBH :(. Hopefully something can be worked out.

[Highflyer]

How big are your paddocks? Is it possible to make a lane down the shared side, fenced off with electric wire? Or at least put a strand of electric wire above the fence?

[Alita]

There’s actually an electric tape laneway in the front paddock (where he’s been moved for now) to stop horses being able to get close to the external gate and let you lead horses in and out of the property safely without having to worry about the ones in the front paddock escaping. When I tried to walk my horse through the other day, he dived through the tape. He’s so wound up at the moment, he was throwing himself repeatedly into a normal wire fence with a hotwire on it when my horse first arrived. The tape is no barrier to him at all by comparison unfortunately, he’d run straight through it.