04/12/2026
🐴 Senior Horse Sunday: Dental Health 🐴🦷
Dental care is a lifelong commitment for our horses—and it becomes especially important as they enter their senior years.
Unlike human teeth, equine teeth are hypsodont, meaning they continually erupt throughout the horse’s lifetime. This design helps compensate for the natural wear that occurs as horses grind fibrous feed material. However, as horses age, the reserve crown of the tooth becomes depleted. Eventually, there may be less and less tooth left to erupt, and some teeth can even wear out completely.
As a result, senior horses are more likely to develop:
• Reduced grinding surface, making it harder to properly chew feed
• Uneven or misaligned chewing surfaces, as teeth wear at different rates
• Sharp points or wave mouth patterns that can cause oral discomfort
During dental exams in senior horses, we carefully look for additional age-related issues, including:
• Tooth fractures
• Dental caries (cavities)
• Signs of periodontal disease- like feed packing and diastemas (gaps between teeth)
These problems can be painful and often go unnoticed without a thorough oral exam.
How often should senior horses have dental exams?
• We recommend a minimum of once-yearly dental exams for senior horses. For horses with active or progressive dental issues, more frequent evaluations may be advised to maintain comfort and function.
Why does dental care matter?
Proper dental management plays a major role in:
• Oral comfort and pain prevention
• Maintaining body weight and condition
• Overall quality of life, especially in aging horses
A special note on incisors and EOTRH
• During senior dental exams, we also pay close attention to the incisors. One condition we specifically watch for is EOTRH (Equine Odontoclastic Tooth Resorption and Hypercementosis), which is more common in older horses.
• Signs we may see during an exam include:
o Gum recession, gingivitis
o Irregular or bulbous-looking incisors
o Fractured incisors
o Draining tracts surrounding incisors
• A definitive diagnosis requires dental radiographs, as changes often occur below the gumline. Management focuses on the horse’s comfort, and extraction of affected teeth is often the recommended treatment.
• At home, owners may notice signs such as:
• Difficulty biting or grasping food
• Drooling
• Bad breath
• Signs of oral discomfort
If you have a senior horse, routine dental care is one of the most impactful ways you can support their health and happiness. If you have concerns about chewing, weight loss, or oral discomfort, we’re always happy to help evaluate and create a plan tailored to your horse.
