She gets checked x2 a year. As well as vitamin E and selenium.
The only thing to note is NPA in the hind feet that’s getting worked on and soreness in the hind end from it. But if anything it’s gotten better over the last few weeks. She’s also a lot calmer and happier overall so it’s just weird she’s so worked up during feeding time.
Any chance someone is reinforcing her ugly behavior at feeding time by mistake? If she’s been getting (inadvertently) rewarded, that could definitely explain why it’s persisting.
I’m under the impression they’re letting her do her thing and just having her back off the bucket and throwing the feed. She lives 24/7 in an in and out paddock with attached stall. She knows to go just outside the stall (where the bucket is placed) to eat.
It’s never towards a person, she just quite literally looks like she gets super excited or a temper tantrum that it’s not coming fast enough. Then if the horse next to her gets excited she will charge the fence and kick out at them. She will run around, stand flinging her head, kick out with one leg, both legs, bucking, etc while waiting for the person to get to her door. Then she’s trained to leave her stall and stand outside once the person enters the stall to throw the feed. It’s not even so much actually feeding her, it’s the waiting that makes her lose her mind.
She was better behaved when her neighbor wasn’t getting fed during feeding time, less excitement going on. A couple months ago he started getting grain portions again.
Well, yeah - it’s not their job to discipline someone else’s horse. That’s where you come in. What are you doing to discourage this behavior?
Full disclosure. I kick these horses out of my barn, as do many BOs. Too much risk to other workers and horses, plus they tend to make their neighbors miserable with their unhappiness.
I had one that would kick only when separated from others. She knew she could kick the barn walls at the others with zero repercussions. She did not act like this in a pasture with other horses because she was not the boss horse.
Electric fencing may help keep her off the fenceline. Refusing to feed her or look at her during feeding time may help. Feeding her may inadvertently be rewarding the behavior. I would either feed her first or refuse to feed her at all and completely ignore the behavior. If she needs to be fed, she would get tied up.
Tying her up at a post before you start feeding anyone may stop her from showing the behavior at all.
I have a young horse and his reaction to frustration is to kick with a front foot- the fence, the gate, or the horse trailer. It’s something I’m trying to discourage. If he does that when I go to feed, I turn around and walk away and no one gets fed until later.
Yeah, so the answer here is she doesn’t get fed until she doesn’t do this. Feeding her when she’s trantruming is reinforcing it. Exactly how you limit her ability to do this or correct the behavior is dependent on set up and who is there.
This is a lot easier to manage if one person is feeding, and that one person a) cares about the behavior and b) has a plan.
To start, if you’re out daily, YOU grain her, and she isn’t allowed to come in with the others.
This is going to be very hard to address unless everyone is on the same page and stops rewarding her being ugly.
Small update, if you want to call it that.
BO won’t feed out alfalfa hay. Also won’t tell me what time they get fed just that she doesn’t think me coming to work with her in her paddock during feeding time will do anything or be sustainable. Is insisting on Regumate.
I don’t even know where to go from here.
If the barn won’t let you fix the problem, which sounds more and more like a training issue, there’s not much you can do 
I would set up hot wire on her fences that she shares with neighbors on offset insulators and light her up like a Christmas tree. And I would treat for ulcers.
This would be a red flag for me to find a new barn.
not knowing when the horses are fed (if it varies, fine, say that)
not allowing you to try to fix the problem
insisting on a medication without any vet consult
Are you particularly attached to this barn?
How big is the turnout? If it’s just a small run, I wouldn’t be surprised if the cramped space was exacerbating her aggression towards the neighbor horses
Any BO/BM who is not only dismissive of, but negating the idea of an owner coming out at certain times to work on a training/behavior issue, is not a barn I want to be at.
I realize changing barns is often easier said than done, but if there’s any other option, I’d investigate that
OP I feel your pain. I just moved barns for this exact reason. I had gone from a larger barn (40-ish) stalls w/runs plus turnout (dry-lot) to 12 stall barn with stalls and runs and pasture turnout BUT aha…no turnout save for the round pen for the winter as they didn’t want pastures torn up. My mare was fine with one neighbor but when she got one on the other side, she was not pleased. He pretty much ignored her belligerence until he decided that he could retaliate. That only made my mare worse and feeding time was a real circus. He would reach over the stall partition (he was 17 hands) and that would really set her off and the double barrel kicking commenced and the snaking her head out the door with ears flat and teeth bared. I started putting her hay in hay nets that I loaded because the owner didn’t want to load them but she would feed them if I loaded. I was trying to keep food in front of her face longer so she would leave everybody alone. That helped a little and Kyra was fed first. Oh and I was doing a course of Nexium in case of ulcers. Unfortunately, her hay was more like jet fuel. I just couldn’t feed her more and not have her overweight. It was supposed to be 50/50 alfalfa grass but I bet it was closer to 70/30 or 80/20 A/G. Kyra is an easy keeper 
.
It just got to be too much drama for me. She might have been OK on the end stall/run but that lady wouldn’t give it up. And she shouldn’t have to but that was the only stall I saw her making a go of it at that barn. The kicker was that the big gelding that harassed her left. A couple weeks later the owner got a lovely little coming 2yo paint filly that went in that stall and my horse simply wanted to kill her. I have no idea why she had such a strong reaction to her. That was it…I just couldn’t take a chance of someone or their horse getting hurt. Luckily, the barn I had moved from (mostly for financial reasons…oh well, it’s only money 
) had a mare motel stall/run on the end of the aisle available. Previously she had been in the proper barn on the end of an aisle so only one neighbor to deal with. The mare motel is less $$ and actually I like it better for her. She seems happy and has grass hay in front of her a good deal of the time. It is the farthest from the arena so relatively quiet and she will get a neighbor next week and I am keeping my 
that she can deal with one horse near her gigantic bubble (personal space).
If not, I don’t know what I will do. Boarding is all but disappearing around here and it is getting very tough to find any place let alone a ‘good’ place that ticks all the boxes.
I have owned this mare for 21 years and she has always been a bitch…no other word for it. She was pastured with others as a youngster and was still a bully and most definitely the boss. She is amazing with people…she just doesn’t like other horses 
. She did get along with my friend’s draft cross mare and we could turn them out together but that has been the only horse in her 23 yrs she took somewhat of a liking to.
Good luck but it sounds like it may be time to move.
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