DO HORSES GET CAVITIES?

I have a weakness for chocolate! My horse

doesn’t though – which is a good thing!

He actually doesn’t even care much for sugar.

There are horses that do. Maybe yours is one

of them. The question of horses getting

cavities often comes up.

“Will my horse get cavities if I feed him sugar

cubes?” The short answer to this question is no.

There is more to the subject, though.

Read on!

There are fundamental differences between horse teeth and human teeth. And they are the reason horses don’t normally get cavities.

The nerve and “live” part of a horse’s tooth is placed much deeper than that of a human tooth.

This is especially true of a horse’s molars. The part of a horse’s molar that you can see above the gum is solid. The pulp chamber is below the gum line.

The second part about a horse’s molar that is interesting is the material that the tooth is made of.

There are three materials in the make-up of a horse molar: dentum, cementum and enamel. These three materials are “marbled”, or folded over each other, through the tooth. And they have different levels of hardness.

The folding of these three materials throughout

the tooth and their different hardnesses result in

the grinding surface of the molar wearing in a

rough, uneven fashion. The resulting corrugated,

uneven surface is a very efficient grinding

Grinding surface of a molar

platform.

If a horse’s molars were made just of enamel, for

example, their wear surface would tend to be

smooth like porcelain. This kind of surface would not grind very well at all.

You likely have noticed that your horse chews in a lateral motion. He literally grinds his teeth together when he chews.

This is another reason why the nerve and pulp chamber are located so deep in the horse’s molar. If he had a nerve structure like our human molars it would be way too sensitive. It would hurt when he grinds his food with that sideways motion.

So, because of these factors, cavities are very rare in horse’s teeth. But yes, horses sometimes can have cavities.

If a horse does have a cavity it is usually as a result of an injury, where the tooth is damaged bad enough to expose the nerve and pulp chamber of the tooth. Fortunately, this is pretty rare.

One other occurrence that can cause a cavity-like problem is where a baby tooth comes off too soon. This can expose the adult tooth beneath it, before it is completely developed and the pulp chamber is closed over.

Again, this circumstance is usually injury related and does not happen too often.

The fact that a horse has molars with deep-set

nerve structures has another benefit. This fact

makes it possible for your equine dentist to

work on your horse’s molars without it being

painful.

Floating the sharp edges and points off your

horse’s molars can be done without it hurting

him.

So, if you have a horse who has a taste for sugar

it

Floating a mules upper molars

is very unlikely that it will end up with cavities

from it.

Sugar, like other “people food” is probably not something you want to feed your horse much of anyway. His whole digestive system is designed to process “horse food”!

So keep the sugar and chocolate for yourself! I personally am glad my horse doesn’t like chocolate – that leaves more for me!

Cliff Hanna practices equine dentistry in northwestern Canada. His main focus has become providing hands-on knowledge to the individual horse enthusiast. Cliff holds equine dental awareness seminars, writes articles for horse magazines and publishes a free newsletter called EquiNews. He is also author of the horse owner’s dentistry handbook, “Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth”.

Contact Cliff at: www.TheHorseDentistryHandbook.com or phone 867) 633-4071.