My Senior Horse Podcast: Dental Care

Many articles on My Senor Horse refer to the need for good dental care of senior equids. In this podcast, we talk to Dr. Jack Easley, a veterinarian and boarded equine dentistry specialist. Easley strived for more than 20 years to create a specialty board for equine dentistry. Then, in 2013, Easley and 18 colleagues from around the world passed the first boards given to 24 veterinarians. He received Diplomate status in the spring of 2014. That is when the American Veterinary Dental College Equine Specialty was formally recognized by the American College of Veterinary Dentistry and the AVMA.

(Editor’s note: The content of this podcast is the expert’s approach to the topic. Please consult with your practitioner if you have questions.)

Senior Horses and Dentistry

Easley commented that in his career, he has seen a huge increase in the population of senior horses. He said practitioners and owners have had to understand old horses because there are more of them around.

“Twenty years ago, senior horses weren’t as important as they are today,” he said. “We do a better job taking care of horses, and they have become more of a partner than a tool. There’s a tremendous emotional attachment that goes with a horse you have had your whole life or the horse’s whole lifetime.”

He added that, “Senior horses have gotten more attention in the last 20 years than they have for the previous 2,500 years!”

Click on the above player to listen to the podcast.

Horse Teeth

Easley said, “I guess the big thing that you need to understand is that all horses will wear their teeth out if they live long enough.”

Horses have hypsodont teeth. That means the horse has reserve tooth in the jaws that aren’t in the mouth. Then as teeth wear in the mouth, the reserve tooth grows down.

By the time a horse is about 5 years old, it has all of its permanent teeth, noted Easley. He explained that the 5-year-old horse has about a 4 1/2-inch-long molar tooth and incisor. And every year those teeth get a little bit shorter.

“But what you see in the mouth stays the same up until a certain age. That’s when the horse reaches the end of the crown portion of the tooth,” explained Easley. “Then they start wearing into the roots. that’s when you start getting the horses with smooth teeth and irregular dental arcades. And that’s when you start seeing a higher incidence of dental disease in older horses and their inability to masticate their feed.”

Tips to Owners

He said horse owners should have at least one oral exam done on their horses each year.

“All horses will have dental issues sometime in their lives,” Easley noted. “As they get older, they have more of them. So, regular dental care with a good thorough oral exam is critically important.”

He said you need to differentiate between getting your horse a float (grinding down points and uneven teeth) and having a dental exam.

“Older horses don’t need to have as much floating as younger horses because their teeth are not erupting as fast,” noted Easley. “But, they have more problems with periodontal disease and abnormal worn teeth.”

His next tip was to watch your senior horse eat. Is the horse chewing its food comfortably? Is food dropping out of its mouth?

“Horses that can’t properly chew up food, they eventually reach a point where they start making cud balls, which are little look like a little cigars that rolled up forage that they drop out of their mouth,” he said. “We see digestive problems like fecal water syndrome where they have sort of a watery diarrhea because they have too much long stem forage in their manure.”

He said those were indications that a horse is not able to chew its food properly.

Easley noted that weight loss also can be a sign that the horse can’t chew its food up properly. “You’re feeding them the same as you used to, but they’re not getting the nutrition out of it,” he explained. “So, they need to have their feed altered to where they have some what we call pre-chewed food. [These are feeds that are manufactured to be easier to chew and digest. These feeds can be soaked to make a mash to help the horse get the nutrients it needs.]

Easley also recommended watching what comes out the other end of your horse. “That’s going to tell us a lot about what they are chewing up,” he said.

Teeth Issues

Many things can happen to horses’ teeth as they age. They can get cracked, broken, or knocked out. But the most common dental issue in aging horses is periodontal disease.

“Once horses get to be 16 to 18 years old, most of them have some periodontal disease,” stated Easley. “And it’s been estimated that horses over 90% of horses over 20 have some periodontal disease.”

As teeth wear down in aging horses, they start to get gaps between their teeth. Food can get lodged between teeth and cause periodontal disease.

“It’s like you getting a seed caught between your teeth that you can’t get out,” described Easley. “Then they start getting gum disease and inflammation, and eventually periodontal pockets that form in there. Those can be extremely painful and can cause a horse to not want to masticate forcefully.”

As teeth age and erupt, the ‘cutting edge’ of the tooth becomes smooth. That means they can’t chew fibers into small pieces that are easy to digest.

“It’s interesting when a veterinarian puts his or her hand in the mouth and kind of rubs on those teeth,” said Easley. “They’ll squeak because they’re a smooth surface. You’ll actually sometimes hear horses as they chew and their teeth kind of squeak together.”

Horses Need Forage

“I see a lot less dental problems on horses that get adequate pasture as opposed to horses that are stabled continuously,” said Easley.

Horses weren’t designed to eat high-carbohydrate diets, said Easley. “They need some forage to keep their mouth cleaned out and to keep the pH in their mouth normal,” he added. “We’ll see some horses that’ll actually get peripheral caries around the outside of their teeth for from a pH change in their mouths.”

Peripheral caries is decay in the cementum around the outside of the tooth. Cementum is tissue similar to bone and serves as an attachment between the tooth and the periodontal ligament, which secures the tooth in the socket. As the tooth erupts, it exposes this cementum in the mouth.

“A slight change in pH in the mouth can cause that cementum to become decayed, which reduces the circumference of the tooth,” described Easley. “That also predisposes to these gaps between the teeth or exposes the brittle enamel on the outside of the tooth.”

He noted that certain feeds, such as silage, can change the pH of a horse’s mouth, as can the minerals in a horse’s water supply.

General Health

Easley said it’s good to have a veterinarian do an annual check of a senior horse. Look for weight issues and pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID or Cushing’s disease). “It’s not a bad idea to have their blood checked occasionally,” he added. “We see lots of older horses that are extremely anemic for really no reason.”

He emphasized keeping horses at a good weight and not let them get too thin or obese. Easley stressed that older horses also need regular vaccinations, deworming, and hoof care.

The Termite Story

Beware of choke in senior horses. That is why Easley recommends soaking pelleted feed and forage. Not only does it make it less likely the horse will choke because it can’t chew up feed properly, it ensures that the feed is broken down into small pieces so that the bacteria in the gut can absorb more nutrients from the feed.

Easley uses the example of a large block of wood and termites. If you cover a large block of wood with termites, it will take a long time for them to get all that wood eaten.

However, if you run that block of wood through a wood chipper and grind it up into powder, then the termites can make short work of that same amount of wood.

“It’s the same way with horses eating forage,” said Easley. “If a horse [with bad or missing teeth] is eating large-stem forage, it won’t get chewed up and goes through undigested. That makes it harder for the bacteria to get nutrients extracted. That’s why horses get so much more nutrition out of pellets because they pulverize that feed into a powder, then pack it in that pellet. So, once it expands and when it gets moistened, there’s lots of surface area on that and nutrients are digested so much better.”

Final Words

“The teeth are so important as horses get older, because if you can’t keep the horse fed and keep him comfortable eating, then that’s usually what causes their demise in the long run,” said Easley.

Management of senior horses that have missing teeth or poor dentition can be difficult and ‘messy,’ said Easley. One tip he recommends for horses that need their feed soaked is to put the feed dish inside a large, empty water tank. That way when the horse is ‘slinging’ the mash around, it doesn’t make the stall as messy and catches the feed that is dropped. Then the horse can spend the time it needs finishing up its meal without losing it in the stall bedding or on the ground.