Why Your Horse Needs Dental Care

The first question a lot of people ask is do horses' teeth grow? 

Horses' teeth don't actually grow, they erupt. They're not like rabbits and rodents that have actually growing teeth. Horses have hypsodont teeth, meaning they have a high crown and a short root unlike the teeth of rodents and rabbits. Hypsodont teeth don't actually grow throughout the horse's life. They erupt from the bone and the gum line. The high crown has gradually worn down by the horse's abrasive fibrous diet in a natural process called occlusal attrition. To compensate for this, hypsodont teeth have a reserve of tooth below the gum line that erupts at a predictable rate of two to three millimeters per year, the teeth are composed of a mixture of enamel, which is hard but brittle, and dentin and cementum. Dentin and cementum are living structures that are adaptable and flexible. As the tooth erupts, the pulp cavity regresses and the tooth deposits more cementum in its place to maintain the strength of the tooth. Dentin is more porous than enamel and absorbs the chlorophyll in plants that the horses are eating. Therefore, staining their teeth brown.

The upper jaw, or the maxilla, is wider than the lower jaw or the mandible. A wider maxilla and mandible causes the cheek teeth to develop a sloping grinding surface. A sloping tooth surface increases the grinding surface area, making mastication or chewing more efficient, but the sloping sets the horse up for the development of sharp edges along the cheeks and tongue if they are not consistently grazing course fiber. 

So what is floating? Well, in reality, floating is something the horse does himself. Ideally, a horse floats its own teeth during normal chewing process or mastication. In the wild, feral horses will wear out their teeth in 12 years from eating abrasive grasses. If the horse has proper jaw alignment and is on predominantly long STEM fiber diet, floating occurs naturally. But if the horse does not have proper jaw alignment or if it's on a high concentrate diet that requires minimal chewing like our domestic horses, floating by a veterinarian may be required to maintain the bite plane.

Wild or feral horses consistently graze and therefore float their own teeth. Unless they have missing, broken or deformed teeth, they can manage on their own. But once a horse wears his crown down to the gum line, he is no longer able to graze and will starve to death, which is why we talked about the life expectancy being shorter in a wild horse versus a domestic horse. And while natural selection dictates breeding in the wild, domestic horse genetics are at the mercy of human preference. Current breeding philosophy often does not consider jaw alignment when deciding which stallion to cover a mare. Breeding horses for facial structures, smaller heads and miniaturization has resulted in more incidences of dental deformity and misalignment. These horses may retain their teeth longer, but they are more likely to develop sharp dental protrusions and therefore require more dental care. Regardless of whether a horse is wild, feral or domesticated, they all have the same number of teeth. Young horses have deciduous or baby teeth. Some of these teeth are present at birth and some erupt through the gum line shortly after birth. The incisors erupt in sets of two by eight days, eight weeks and eight months as seen in the picture shown in our Youtube Video.

The 24 deciduous teeth are shed at predictable ages as the permanent adult teeth erupt from beneath them starting at two years old. During this time, non-painful hard lumps become present underneath the horse's jaw. The lumps are called eruption cysts and are sites of bony remodeling in response to tooth root growth and the resistance from the deciduous cap. The lumps are self limiting and disappear by the time the horse has a full set of permanent teeth at five years.

We hope you enjoyed this free sample of our online equine dentistry course. To learn more or purchase the full equine dental course and learn more about how to care for your horse's teeth, click here.