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

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ®

teeth already in place. We are going to be addressing four basic issues that are experienced during the development of the mouth between two and five. These are sharp edges on the outside of the top teeth, the loss of the deciduous teeth (shedding caps), the appearance and subsequent extraction of wolf teeth and the maintenance of a smooth grinding surface between the top and bottom molars as these surfaces are constantly disrupted by the processes just mentioned. The sharp edges on the outside of the top molars (and occasionally on the inside edge of the bottom molars) are simply a result of uneven frictional wear. The horse digestive system is designed to be most efficient at processing only those foods which have been completely ground, especially when it comes to forages. The teeth are composed of a material which lends itself to being worn away in the process of grinding. The teeth are continually erupting into the mouth to compensate for the loss of tooth surface from the grinding process. The constant eruption/grinding action results in sharp edges which become a source of irritation and pain to the cheeks and tongue. The inevitable result is reduced nutrition if their feed in not pre-processed (pellets, ground hay, etc.) and pain from any pressure to the face in the training process. Eliminating the sharp edges by having a routine floating can greatly enhance

your training and feeding program.

The wolf teeth appear by one and a half or two years old in most cases. They are a small, useless tooth located directly forward of the top front molar on each side. They have a short root imbedded primarily in the hard gum tissue. When the horse bites down on something hard against them or when bit pressure from the side forces the cheek tissue into them, they can be very irritating to the gum tissue and cause a horse to tilt or jerk their head. Wolf teeth are found in virtually all males. There is a belief by some that females don’t get wolf teeth, but I find wolf teeth in about one out of every five or six fillies that I check. They tend to be more frequent in performance bred (race, reining, cutting, etc.) from my experience. My theory is that they are a phenomenon triggered by testosterone in the system and some of the girls have slightly more than their share of testosterone. In most cases, the wolf teeth are a simple, low trauma extraction and can be done at the time of floating. We always strive to achieve a grinding pattern where the top and bottom flat grinding surfaces are meeting as close to one hundred percent as possible. This can be a real challenge when twenty-four teeth are coming and going over a three year period. The photo of the teeth which accompanies the article is of

The deciduous teeth are lost in a rather regimented process. A thorough understanding of the timing involved in this process can result in a much smoother training program and also eliminate a world of frustration. As a general rule, the deciduous teeth are lost on the half year. In other words, a two-year old will lose the two central incisors top and bottom and the first molar top and bottom on each side at approximately two and a half years old. A three-year old will lose the top and bottom incisor in the second position on each side and the second molar top and bottom on each side at three and a half. Your four- year old will lose their corner incisors and their third molars back at four and a half. I say “as a general rule” because it is not uncommon for the molar caps to come off two to four months before the incisors are lost. It would be very considerate of the horse to lose all eight of these teeth each year within a period of a week or two but such is not the case. They seem to randomly lose them over a period of a couple of months which tends to wreak havoc with a training program. Since most horses in the Midwest are foaled in the Spring, they tend to start losing caps in the early Fall. A horse that has been working great all Spring and Summer may suddenly start fighting the bit, jerking the head or refusing to hold a proper headset as a result of discomfort in the mouth.

17 Everything Horses and Livestock® | February 2020 | EHALmagazine.com