[SweetIron]

I tried something with both of my mares tonight when bringing them in. I wanted to remove the burrs and plant stickers from their manes and forelocks. I am all about making everyday things into lessons, so here is what I did.
I feed non-sweet feed for them in the morning and at night. They have hay all day and thus were by no means starving. What I did was, put each mares' feed in her bowl on the ground seperately. I would then make her stand with her head at my level so that I could remove the burrs from their manes. If they so much as thought about moving their nose to the food, I pulled their halter up again.
By the time I was done with each of them (this was a pretty quick thing; no more than 2-3 minutes of burr-removing per mare) they were standing nicely and not lunging at their feed or ignoring me. They are never food-aggressive to me to begin with, but I just thought that this was a neat little lesson for them and I went away happy.