Equine Dentistry Without Drama™ Blog, Articles, Videos, and Interviews (use the categories on the left to narrow your search)

Equine Dentistry - Twenty Five Years From Now

The opinions and views of this blog is for information and entertainment only and should not be used as a substitute for seeking advice from your veterinarian about your horse and your situation. Specific advice may only be given after a valid veterinary - client - patient relationship is made.Last night we were sitting in the living room watching re-runs of The Cosby Show with my Father In Law who is visiting us in sunny South Florida along with another couple escaping the cold and snow of the north.  They all are about 25 years older than we are.

    My eyes drifted over to George, Tom, and Helen.  In stead of looking at them as people, I objectively looked at them as life forms in their eighties.  How did they get to this point in their lives and continue to thrive while others in their 80's are falling apart?

    Then, as the 70 plus year old Cosby had the room laughing until all were crying, I wondered why some of the 25 plus year old horses I see have very healthy teeth while some others have loose teeth or multiple missing teeth.  Besides genetics, was there something in the management of them that had caused this?

    We know that in horses, the teeth develop into a fully mature set of choppers around their fifth year.  In adult humans, what we see of the tooth is called the crown while the root part attaches the tooth to the jaw.  But in the horse there is a long hidden portion called the reserve crown lying under the gum ready to replace worn tooth.  This is a fundamental difference between humans and horses.

    Thanks to the research of Katherine Houpt, VMD, an emeritus professor at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine (and a friend and former employer), we all now know that a horse chews between 10,000 and 40,000 times a day (Equine Maintenance Behavior: Feeding, Drinking, Coat Care, and Behavioral Thermoregulation) (Control Of Food Intake In Horses) (Feeding And Drinking Behavior Of Mares And Foals With Free Access To Pasture And Water).  There are 86,400 seconds in a day which means that on average, the horse is chewing about one third of a day.  Another way of putting it, on average a horse chews 25,000 times a day, one quarter of a million chews in 10 days, or 9 million 125 thousand times a year (9,125,000) - OR MORE!

    As your horse chews, a portion of the hard tooth wears away from two effects: grinding against the opposite tooth and stropping of the tongue (like a steel razor sharpened by a leather strap).  As the tooth is worn away, it is replaced by the reserve crown.  This continues until there is no more reserve crown and the tooth eventually falls out.  With all things going well, the horse finally dies because he can no longer create a bolus of food to swallow.

    Where does dentistry for the horse fit into good management?  There are two thoughts I have for you.  

    First, we remove the pain caused by the sharp tooth edges scraping the tongue and cheek.  This allows for two things:
    1)    All the teeth receive an equal amount of pressure creating a healthy stimulus to cause the tooth to remain tight in the socket.
    2)    All the teeth receive an equal amount of cleaning and pressure from the tongue causing the teeth to remain healthy and firmly attached to the jaw throughout life.

    Second, if we over grind the tooth when floating and remove more than just the sharp edges, then the tooth will run out of reserve crown and the horse will loose teeth long before he is ready to die.

    At our practice of Equine Dentistry Without Drama™, we take off only what makes the horse comfortable but leave remaining the tooth necessary for a complete life.  We believe that over-grinding the tooth shortens the life span of the tooth and will eventually cause premature tooth loss.  Can we prove this?  Not yet.  But we will see shortly.  Power grinding teeth has been around for less than 25 years as a major technique of floating teeth.  Only in the past 10 years has it become popular enough that many horses are affected.  We will see in the next 10 to 15 years if the prediction of premature loss of teeth is associated with power grinding of teeth.

    And I will be in the barn watching re-runs of Mr Ed while my son gently eyes me and my wife wondering, what will the next 25 years bring.
Equine Dentistry - Twenty Five Years From Now by Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Blog by Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.