This is driving me slightly bonkers
We have horses, along one side of their field is a public footpath and we’re having issues with people feeding them
I don’t mind the occasional carrot but now the weather is getting better more and more people are using the footpath and the horses are being fed more and more crap - I’ve caught people giving them sandwiches and crisps, and once a sausage roll!
One of our horses is retired and it’s a struggle to keep her weight down, they both get bargy and bitey if they’re hand fed too much as every time they see someone they think they’re going to get given a treat, plus they fight if one thinks the other is getting something they’re not
We’ve put up signs up everywhere asking people not to feed the horses - they were ignored.
We then put up electric fence to keep the horses away from the locked gate - so people climbed over the gate
We changed the signs so they were less polite, put up CCTV and more electric fencing to try and keep the horses further away from the gate and the hedge and people are still climbing over the gate and now chucking stuff over the hedge
I’m loath to fence them any further away from the hedge/gate as they’re already losing half of their field
I’ve caught several people feeding them, I’ve asked politely for them to stop it and explained why. I’ve encouraged fuss not food, I’ve offered to put the treats in their feed buckets for them and 75% of the time I’ve had nothing but rudeness and abuse in return
I’ve found a Dad actually in their field with his toddler son once, been called a stuck up bitch, told by a woman that she was going to carry on feeding them whatever as her children like to see them and that I should keep them in their stable if I don’t want people to feed them
It baffles me. Why can’t people just leave them alone?
It’s like people think they have some sort of shared ownership or something - except when it comes to the vet bills 