Routine dental care for your horse is important. Horses evolved as grazing animals and their mouths are perfect for it. The front teeth, known as incisors, pull and shear off the grass. The cheek teeth, including the molars and premolars, grind the grass with a sideways motion into a mash to be easily swallowed. Pastured horses will graze 10 to 12 hours a day. Stabled horses are fed two to three times a day leading to less jaw movement and little opportunity to use their incisors to shear grass.
To enable a horse to stay healthy, a good working mouth is essential. Some reasons why your horses’ teeth need regular treatment by a qualified equine dentist follow:
- Horse teeth continue to erupt throughout the life of a horse.
- The horses upper jaw is wider than the lower jaw. Normal use, sideways grinding of food, can create sharp points on the cheek surface of the upper teeth and the tongue surface of the lower teeth. The points can damage cheek or tongue causing discomfort and pain.
- Horses need teeth of an even heigh so that the roughage they eat is ground properly. If not, it can cause digestion problems leading to colic.
- Due to domestication and stabling of horses, feeding patterns have changed resulting in the front teeth, incisors, not wearing at the same rate as the premolars (1st three sets of large cheek teeth) and molars (2nd three sets of large cheek teeth)
- Horses chew in a figure of 8 type pattern.
Scheduling routine treatment with an equine dentist is simple, but understanding them as they explain your horse’s mouth and what they are doing might be confusing.
You may have heard that it is important to “float” your horses teeth but didn’t understand exactly what that meant. Historically, routine maintenance of a horse’s teeth has been referred to as “floating”. It means to smooth or contour the teeth using a file also known as a rasp and historically called a ‘float”. Other terms that you may your horse’s dentist use are defined below:
• Arcade: a row of teeth
• Cap: a baby tooth covering the permanent tooth ready to erupt. It is shed when the permanent tooth is ready to erupt. If a cap is not shed, it may delay the permanent tooth to erupt causing cysts
• Caudal Hooks: The lower or upper last molar overhanging opposing molar.
• Cheek teeth: term used to describe all teeth behind the incisors, top and bottom, used to grind food. Includes premolars and molars
• Crown: The portion of the tooth that gradually erupts into the mouth and is used for grinding, not the root.
• Deciduous: “Baby” teeth.
• Diastema: A space between teeth. This may be the normal space between the incisors and the cheek teeth or an abnormal space that develops between one or more cheek teeth.
• Eruption: when a tooth moves out from the bone of jaw into the mouth.
• Hook: A pointed end or protuberance on a tooth through abnormal wear.
• Malocclusion: Abnormal contact between opposing teeth.
• Mastication: The act of chewing or grinding food.
• Occlusion: Refers to chewing or biting surfaces and is the contact points.
• Permanent: “Adult” teeth. A horse will have these by 2 or 2 1/2 years old. They are intended to remain for the horse’s life.
• Quidding : The dropping of partly chewed food from the mouth.
• Rostral Hooks: Dominant upper front premolars overhang lower premolars.
• Shearmouth : Through abnormal wear, the angle of contact between the top and bottom cheek teeth has become greater than the normal 10-15 degrees and may have reached 45 degrees.
• Slant Mouth : Contact between the top and bottom incisors at an angle instead of being horizontal.
• Step Mouth : Through abnormal wear, the grinding surface of the cheek teeth arcade is arranged in step like fashion instead of the normal smooth curve.
• Tushes or Tusks : The canine teeth found between the incisors and the cheek teeth. Theoretically used for fighting and present in most male horses. Usually very small or absent in mares.
• Wave Mouth : Due to uneven wear, the grinding surface of the cheek teeth arcade has a wavelike appearance instead of a smooth curve.
• Wolf Tooth: Small shallow rooted teeth in front of premolars.
by A.C.
https://aaep.org/horsehealth/importance-maintaining-health-your-horses-mouth
http://www.aboutyourhorse.com/what-does-floating-teeth-mean-why-it-necessary
https://www.localriding.com/horse-teeth.html
