Teeth Talk

What effect does forage have on your horse’s teeth?

- Lizzie Harrison

Horses were born to graze. If forage is available, all horses will naturally graze on it for 10 to 12 hours a day. Horses in the wild, usually, do not need the dentist, as their teeth are getting the grinding and movement they need from living a life where grazing is available 24/7.

Today, our horses are commonly stabled, and often the importance of free-choice forage is underestimated, with many horses standing for hours each day with no forage at all. This is compounded by all of the issues we face today in finding good-quality forage at affordable prices.

These lifestyle changes mean ultimately that the needs of our horses have changed, and this very much include their dentistry needs. Like humans, horses go through two sets of teeth in their lifetime. As in humans, the ‘baby’ teeth – deciduous teeth – are temporary, and by the age of five years old most horses will have their full set of permanent teeth. These permanent teeth ‘erupt’ or ‘grow’ at a rate of 2 to 3mm per year until the horse is well into his 20s, to replace the tooth length that is lost during the grinding and chewing motions.

Evolution

Evolution designed the horse to live on fibrous food. Fibrous food has a relatively low nutrient value, and this means that large quantities of food must be ingested in order for the horse to survive. Fibrous foods are not only low in nutrients, but are also not easy to digest, and chewing and grinding is therefore vital to both break down the fibrous food and increase its surface area so that as it travels through the digestive tract, its nutrients can be made as accessible and easily absorbable as possible. This allows the horse to extract the nutrients from the fibrous foods with optimal efficiency.