​Beadle Lake Veterinary Clinic

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Equine Dentistry

Your horse’s dental care is essential to its health. Regular dental examinations and floating are important to maintaining or improving feed efficiency, performance, and comfort of the horse.  While every horse benefits from dentistry throughout its lifetime, it is even more important for performance horses. With proper sedation and an oral speculum for full visualization of the mouth, we perform a complete examination of the oral cavity and develop a plan for floating or determine if additional diagnostics such as x-ray are needed. For the ‘float’, our veterinarians use a variety of motorized dental tools to ensure that the horse’s mouth is balanced and free of sharp enamel points that can ulcerate the cheeks and tongue. Routine dental work can be performed on the farm or at our clinic. If further treatment is required, such as tooth extraction or other periodontal therapy, we recommend bringing your horse to the clinic.

Common Dental Problems:

• Sharp enamel points along the cheek and tongue that can cause ulcers or lacerations
• Molar hooks and ramps that can cause lacerations, limit the ability to chew properly, and can impact collection when riding
  
• Wolf teeth – these are tiny teeth that sit just in front of the first pre-molar tooth. We recommend removing these prior to putting a bit in the horse’s mouth as they can cause some discomfort.
  
• Tooth fractures
  
• Excessive wear of one tooth can cause excessive growth of the opposite tooth, causing asymmetrical and imbalanced dentition.
  
  

Signs of a Dental Problem – What You May See:

• Dropping feed
  
• Weight loss or difficulty maintaining weight
  
• Poor odor from the nostrils or mouth
  
• Odorous nasal discharge
  
• Resistance to the bit or head tossing
  
• General poor performance
  

When to call:

For routine care of performance horses, we recommend a dental examination and float at least once every 12 months. Some horses require more or less frequent floats, depending on their age and natural mouth conformation. Dental problems are always easier to address and often have a better outcome when they are diagnosed and treated early, which makes routine exams an essential part of your horse’s health care.