Situational Queen Bee

Q:  One of our horses—we call her "The Queen"—is very gentle, well--behaved, and loves attention when we're interacting with her one-on-one; however, with other horses around, she acts like a little kid who wants all the attention. In her stall, she'll reach over the wall into the next stall and bite the horse in there if we are paying attention to him. Or if we’re interacting with another herd member in the pasture and do not pay attention to her, she will bite that horse or try to shove her way in front of them. What could be causing her to act this way? Is there anything we can do to stop or reduce this behavior?

 

A:  The reason horses do this is that they perceive caretakers (and often any people) as a limited resource worth guarding and even fighting over, similar to a bucket of grain. In many cases it is an extension of food-aggressiveness, in that the horse comes to associate people with feeding. After all, for most horses people are the conditioned predictor of feeding. 

 

Some horses appear to have these tendencies by nature, and for others there are some reasonable explanations for why they are particularly attentive to and possessive of people. For example, horses that have been hand-reared or that have otherwise been given a lot of attention from people such that they seem to develop strong bonds with human caretakers tend to have this tendency for life. It is a difficult one to overcome. If it appears to be an association with feeding, then you can take steps to try to reduce the strong connection between people and feeding, especially the feeding of highly palatable feeds and hand-fed treats. Sometimes we reinforce the guarding behavior without realizing it.