Ridecamp: [RC] Food aggression

I have a problem that I've never had to deal with and not sure what to do,
I apologize it's not endurance related.  Been around horses all my life,
and experience tells me to go out with a bucket of feed and a crop.  (and a
helmet <bg>).  Any advice is appreciated, this is the problem.  My gelding
is now 2 1/2 and officially horse sized (funny this all started after he
was gelded).  He pins his ears at me at feeding time, I dump his feed over
the fence into his bucket and growl at him to back off if he's manhandling
me over the fence as he sometimes does.  After he has the first bite he'll
put his head back over the fence for a scratch.  Last weekend I put up some
hot fence out back so he could eat down some of the grass and left him out
for several hours.  Dinnertime, still plenty of daylight, "I'll just feed
him out here and then put him up when the sun sets".  Luckily he had a
halter on, after 2 swats and shoves from me as I'm heading over to his
other feed bucket, he literally acted like he was about to run over me/kick
me/do whatever he had to do to GET THAT FEED!  I saw a cow kick coming, so
I jumped forward, grabbed his halter, stick my elbow into the base of his
neck, wrap his neck around my arm so we're face to face and l start shoving
him to his bucket where I happily dump the feed and let him go.  This is a
very intelligent sweet natured whatever makes you happy type of horse.  I
don't have a round pen and we have so many trees there's not even space to
put a horse on a longe line.  Do I just start carrying a crop and whap him
when he invades my space?  Any advice from someone who's dealt with this
would be greatly appreciated!

Stephanie (Where's my cattle prod?)
Remington (I'm bigger than yoooou arrree!)


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