My gelding has recently picked up the habit of flipping at his feed bucket (one of the over the fence ones) and it is quickly becoming an extremely annoying pet peeve for me. Would love to do a corner feeder but really don’t have a suitable corner ( runout stalls, with metal gates on barn side) any ideas? Maybe I just need to go back to a ground pan once the weather gets better.
I took a rubber bucket and bolted it to a four foot by four foot piece of 3/4 inch treated plywood… then he could not flip it because he was standing on the mount
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Bucket in an old tyre
If your Flipper is like mine that might only teach him a new trick.
I had rubber pans 10+yrs old when I got my newest horse.
He had been fed from a manger for 6yrs before he came to me.
He has learned to grab the pan by the lip & shake it to bring grain at the edges to the center.
Cute to watch, but In 5yrs he has torn the lip completely off 2 buckets & the replacements are losing theirs.
When the pan is empty he also picks it up to show me & will frisbee it out of the stall.
Nosebag might work. I hate it when they waste grain.
But you do have to wait around to remove the nosebag when he finishes.
I did not like pan/tub or bucket in a tire because it seemed to always be full of water. Had to be dumped about daily before putting in the hay or feed.
I have a gelding that is a bucket flipper. I use rubber ground feeding tubs and let him do his thing. They are pretty durable, although he does have one currently with a tear in the side. Since the feeder is 5 years old I am not upset about it.
If I try to feed him in a bucket that hangs in the stall he demolishes the bucket (and sometimes the hook) in short order. Best to let him toss the rubber pan around instead.
Drill a small hole (or holes) on the back of your over-the-fence feeder and zip tie it to the rail.
I made a wide nylon web strap with Velcro to hold the fence feeder to the fence when my horse did that. Worked for a while. As did a nosebag with an added jowl strap.
I also bungied a tubtrug to a fence. And used a giant carabiner through the handles. And tried a pan in a tire. And a bolted on corner feeder. Yeah… no… he wrecked them all.
In the end I used an old concrete cow manger at my old barn that was concreted to the ground. That worked… 
I had a mare who would not only flip her bucket but would just dribble everything out. I finally went with a feed bag. Just a thought.
My new boy, unknown to me until I got him, is a flipper, pawer, etc. I’ve sort of resigned myself, though to my mild horror I find the other two seem to be picking up on the idea…
But, my question for those using feed bags is this: in the winter I feed SOUP, as in soaked hay pellets, some beet pulp, a ration balancer, and a supplements as individually required. The two big guys end up with almost a gallon of water that has soaked up around 10 cups of dry material. They love it. But would that work with a feed bag? I don’t see how it could?
One of my guys was a flipper until I got him the Better Bucket. It’s larger so the handle doesn’t poke him in the head and eye area when eating. It’s also a bit slanted so feed stays in the center. Has a flat back so it hangs easily on stall rail. I started with one as a test and I’m so happy with the results that I am planning to replace all of the buckets in the barn. Might be worth looking into…
My horse broke his Better Bucket in short order. He also bent the bucket bracket in the process. YMMV, of course.
When I used to have my herd and fed six horses I used feed bags. I bought the cashel draft sized feed bags which an 8qt round bucket fits very nicely into. I had the buckets color coordinated per horse so I knew who’s was who’s, it held watery stuff well with the bucket, and the buckets helped cut down on some of the wear and tear and made them easy to clean.
we use a feed bag for Bonnie, otherwise she throws grain around. It took her about 30 seconds to adjust to eating from the feed bag
Socks has one also but we ended up changing his feeder to a more ergonomically designed bucket that allows him to get to all the grain and meds
One of mine has outsmarted the feedbag in his desperation to flip, he flings his entire head in the air and feed goes showering out the sides.
In the winter his feed is soaked, so the bucket and food is so heavy he can’t effectively spray his feed around like candy from a piñata.
In the summer, he’s on a much smaller, and dryer ration. I feed him on a matted surface. I use a battery-powered leaf blower to blow dust and grit away from his eating area and then dump his food right on the mat. He’ll still shove it around, maybe step on some, but it doesn’t end up in the dirt on the other side of the fence, or being flung around like confetti.
These work great for flippers. I’ve got one who would paw at a feeder, play with it, flip it, and literally attack the thing…and he can’t do anything to this one except eat from it.
https://www.statelinetack.com/item/high-country-plastics-grain-pan-feeder-waterer/E021035/
I have a flipper too. For some reason, the only thing that makes him eat quietly is laying a flake of hay on the ground and dumping the grain on top of it. Alfalfa works best since it’s so tightly baled, but any hay does the trick for him.
I found that putting the feeder (the bendy trug style) inside a larger more solid bin stopped my horse from being able to fling food. He still made the flipping motion with his nose, but the feeder just slid around inside the bigger bin and he couldn’t get enough leverage to actually flip the feeder out or to even push any of the feed out of it. When he was finished he would make a big deal of carefully removing the feeder from the bin by it’s handle and throwing it as far as he could so that he could clean up anything that had slipped into the bigger bin.
I don’t like tyres etc. just because they are so heavy and difficult to move around.
