eQUINe DeNTIsTs
An equine dental examination using a mouth brace
horse benefits and so do you. The horse makes around 70-90 chewing motions per minute eating hay and 800-1200 when eating one kilo of concentrate – that’s a lot. every time a horse chews, any sharp teeth further back in its mouth, maybe the ones you can’t feel, are cutting into its cheeks or it may be suffering discomfort from an overgrown tooth, overgrown ridges, decay or disease. 500 million years of evolution has programmed every horse to eat despite discomfort and show few if any signs. There are many factors affecting the modern day racehorse, even down to such
things as the dry matter we feed which drastically slows down the chewing motions and therefore the wear on teeth; a horse has up to 60 less motions per minute eating dry matter in a stable than it does outside grazing and both of these feed stuffs still contain considerably less silicates (abrasive substances) than the horse evolved to eat. The moisture content of feed directly correlates with number of chewing motions and these facts fit perfectly with how the modern horse is managed in training. all these factors can directly contribute to uneven wear patterns that result in an unbalanced and
restricted jaw movement. The effect is likely to cause stress on joints from stiffness down one side that originated from something very simple like a retained cap/decay or overgrowths and result in deep ridges on the surface from eating just the feed we give them. an unbalanced mouth at one end, even though only slight, could easily lead to unbalance a lot bigger at the other end. Think of the retained caps the stabled horse inevitably gets and the small infection that surrounds them – this in turn requires the immune system to fight this and may lead to susceptibility to something else. all fairly ISSUE 51 TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM
EUROPEAN TRAINER ISSUE 51 TEETH .indd 71
71
25/09/2015 08:19