Everything Horses and Livestock® Magazine Feb 2020 Vol 5 Issue 1

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ®

First of the Three Eras of Dental Care By Ed McCarty

Over the course of nearly 30 years of lay dentistry, I have come to place the dental problems and needs of the vast majority of horses into 3 distinct age groups. I have dubbed these The Three Eras of Dental Care. An understanding of the transformation inside the mouth during each era should assist owners/trainers in recognizing or possibly even anticipating problems. In this article we hope to give you the tools needed to understand the dental issues of your young horse and enhance your nutrition and training program. I have defined the First Era as occurring between the ages of two and five. During this era, there will be a continuous process of change within the mouth of our young horses. This change can result in considerable discomfort at various times which undoubtedly effects training and performance. An understanding of the process and the time schedule of the various events comprising the process can have an enormous impact on your effectiveness as an owner or trainer. Coincidentally, this time period is also when we are trying to teach our young horse a multitude of new things and

first twenty-four teeth is that they are all deciduous, or baby teeth, which will eventually be lost and replaced by permanent teeth. The exact process that occurs in our children. By the time the youngster is approaching two they will have all six molars on each side top and bottom. They now finally have the thirty- six teeth common to all horses. One big difference in the fourth, fifth and sixth molars that erupt on each side top and bottom is that these are permanent teeth as opposed to the deciduous

much of the teaching is done by pressure on the face in some form or another. New foals will be sporting a couple of little “pearly whites” in the front center of their mouth within a very short time. These will be followed over the course of the next 8 months or so by the appearance of all six incisors top and bottom and the first three molars top and bottom on each side. These are the first twenty-four of the thirty-six teeth that all horses, male and female, will get. The distinctive thing about these

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