Everything Horses and Livestock® Magazine

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ®

DENTAL NEEDS OF THE MATURE HORSE (AGES 6-EARLY 20’S) By Ed McCarty

(maxilla) for the top teeth and down into the jaw bone (mandible) for the bottom teerh. These permanent molars are composed of a slightly softer, more porous material than our teeth and are designed to be ground away throughout the life of the horse. To compensate for the teeth being ground down, there is a continual process of new bone formation in the maxilla above the top teeth and the mandible below the bottom teeth. The bone is formed at the rate of about 1/8” per year forcing the teeth to literally be erupted into the mouth at about 1/8” per year. The horse is thus required to grind away this amount of tooth each year. This process becomes the root of most dental maintenance issues. Anatomically, the head bone is wider than the jaw bone in a horse so the top teeth extend to the outside of the bottom teeth when the mouth is closed. The side to side motion of the lower jaw in the grinding of food should comprise a range of motion which allows the bottom molars to extend out past the edge of the top molars in each stroke. In reality, our domestic horses tend to get a little lazy in the grinding process and rarely chew with that range of motion. They

I n my previous article we discussed the dental needs of the young horse, ages 2-5. By the age of 6 years of age your horse has lost all of its baby teeth(caps) and now has a full mouth of permanent teeth consisting of 24 molars, 12 incisors and 4 canines (males only). We are assuming that

the wolf teeth, if they were present, have been extracted by this time. These permanent molars are about 3” long in a full-size horse with about ¾” of the tooth protruding into the mouth and the remainder of the tooth up in the tooth socket of the head bone

Everything Horses and Livestock® | May 2020 | EHALmagazine.com 14