Food; Equine Dentistry

Laney Humphrey (laneyh@mbay.net)
Tue, 18 Nov 1997 07:57:31 -0800

Lysane - My guess would ge that your horse needs a visit to a real equine
dentist. In the years after motor vehicles replaced horses as our beasts
of burden, we mostly forgot how important taking care of horses' teeth it.
Now there are a growing number of people who specialize in equine
dentistry. They are not necessarily vets but do need to work with a vet
since the horse must be tranquilized. They have special skills and tools
that allow them to get at the furthest back molars and also the incisors.
These are the main areas that floating misses. In fact, floating can make
the problem worse since itlowers the molars while leaving the incisors too
long. Put your front teeth together like you're biting off a piece of
something. Do your molars also meet? Probably not. That situation can be
what's happening to your horse - all the time since they can only move
their jaws sideways. The result is that the poor horse can hardly chew its
food at all which leads to poor digestion, poor nutrition, and even colic
and choke when the horse has to swallow huge chunks of poorly chewed hay.
Problems can also occur along the molars, especially the rear ones which
are too far back for regular floating tools to reach. "Points," sharp
ridges and points along the outside edges of the molars can cause amazing
damage to the insides of the horse's cheeks and the sides of the tongue.
Big points on the rear molars can make it impossible for the horse to bend
at the poll because they lock the jaw. So, you will probably be amazed at
the changes you will see in attitude, behavior and condition after your
horse's visit to the dentist (really, the dentist's visit to your horse!)
Laney
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>From: "Lysane Cree" <cree_l@LSA.Lan.McGill.CA>
>Organization: McGill Faculty of Law
>To: ridecamp@endurance.net
>Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 13:15:52 EST
>Subject: Food
>Priority: normal
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>My horse is a pretty big slob when eating his food -he likes to take
>his time and takes a big mouthful of grain and then proceeds to look
>around and daydream, letting some of the food fall out as he chews. He
>used to take a mouthful and dip his full mouth into his water bucket while
he
>ate, whether it was hay or grain (It was always quite the challenge
>scraping frozen oat/hay gunk off of the bottom of the bucket before
>refilling the bucket). I also noticed that there was bits of oats in
>his manure.
>I have since had his teeth floated, have moved his bucket of water to the
other
>side of the stall (he still insists on dipping his hay once in
>awhile, no matter what
>I do) and I added some water to his grain/supplement mixture so that he
>doesn't dip his nose into the water bucket anymore, but he still
>drops some food while he eats and I can see some whole grains of oats
>in his manure. Should I be concerned about this and can I do anything
>about it? Oh, and he is on a regular worming schedule, the last time
>he was wormed was in October and he is due for another one this
>upcoming weekend.
>Lysane and Buck
>
>