Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

21
Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

description

Cleaning your horse's teeth can have an impact on his health and well-being. Learn the importance of equine teeth cleaning in this presentation from Horseland.com.au with equine dentist Mark Burnell.

Transcript of Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

Page 1: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

Equine Dentistry:

Equine Teeth Cleaning

with

Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

Page 2: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

My name is Mark Burnell and I’m a horse dentist. I’m going to

explain today about caring for horses’ teeth. There are two main

reasons for doing horses’ teeth.

Page 3: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

The first is to help the horse eat its food more

efficiently and the second is to make the horse feel

more comfortable while it is wearing a bit. So, I want

to give this horse, Lucy, some hay. We are going to

watch how Lucy eats and also we are also going to

take this hay out of Lucy’s mouth after she has eaten

a few mouthfuls. Horses evolved into their current

form about 60 million years ago.

Page 4: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

We’ve only domesticated them in the last two and a

half, three thousand years and we’ve certainly

modified their shape and their type to suit our

purposes. But the basic thing underlying it all is

horses can turn this long stuff, grass, into a digestible

form of energy so they have enough energy to run

away from predators, to run around with their friends

and hopefully reproduce.

Page 5: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

Lucy is quite happy chewing this hay. What she’s

actually doing is crushing these long bits of fibre and

there’s a piece of rye grass. Before she can swallow

that and she’s going to swallow some food in a

minute, we are going to see a bolus or a ball of food

go down her throat. Here we are. There goes a ball of

food down into her stomach. Between swallowing and

her doing some poo, is about a forty-hour process.

Page 6: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

If this is chewed incompletely before she swallows it,

that is going to affect how much of this she can digest

and gain energy to do all the things that Lucy is

required to do. So we are going to take a look at what

has happened to this food in this couple of minutes of

our standing still here. This is called a gag and we

use this as a professional horse dentist in order to

hold the horse’s mouth open and do our job which is

basically rasping sharp points off horses’ teeth.

Page 7: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

What Lucy has done if we take a look at this food,

she has wet it, mixed it with saliva and it actually

smells quite sweet. You can see all these little short

bits of fibre here. So what she has is a really effective

food processing unit in her mouth. Those fibres went

in, this long, and within the first couple of chews, she

has made them this long and finally this long and

even finer which is approximately the length of a

piece of chaff.

Page 8: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

So here we have a chaff cutting mechanism which

evolved 60 million years ago to convert fibre into a

digestible form. Where this fibre is finally broken down

in the most effective place is the large intestine.

Bacteria will help break this down and fatty acids will be

released as part of that digestion process. Then we get

the energy from this dried grass or hay. Her teeth, the

fact she can chop this food up so finely to a point where

it can be swallowed and digested, we know that her

teeth are fairly functional before we even feel her teeth.

Page 9: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

Here we have some whole oats with some corn and

sunflower seed. We’ve done some research in Victoria

at the University of Melbourne, looking at how horses

eat and how horses eat different types of food whether

it is grain or hay. Horses actually change their chewing

motion according to what they eat. We’re going to hear

some really funky noises out of Lucy’s mouth in a

minute as she crushes these grains. In order for Lucy to

digest these grains, she has to break this outer casing

open.

Page 10: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

If she swallows those grains whole, it will go through her

digestive tract and not be digested at all. You will see

whole grains in her droppings. Lucy looks pretty happy

because she’s actually getting a sugar fix. The corn that

was mixed with the oats is rich in starch and the corn is

being mixed with saliva and in particular an enzyme

called amylase and is getting converted to sugars

before she swallows it. So if we have a look at this stuff,

anyone who’s had Uncle Toby’s oats for breakfast ever,

would know what this looks like.

Page 11: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

It smells sweet. There we have the amylase mixing

with the starches that she’s broken, all those fibres

open and its ready to be digested and Lucy’s feeling

happy.

My job as a horse dentist is to simply rasp the parts of

the horse’s teeth off that they can’t naturally wear off.

Horses have what they call a three quarter bite. The

lower jaw rotates against the upper jaw. In that grinding

process of either breaking down hay, grass or grain,

Page 12: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

they actually wear away the grinding surface of the

teeth. The outside edges of the upper teeth get quite

sharp, the inside edges of the lower teeth get quite

sharp, we rasp those off and just help the horse more

efficiently grind in that sideways motion. The sharp

points can cause ulcers especially where your

noseband on your bridle goes, if the noseband is too

tight or if the teeth are quite sharp.

Page 13: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

So it is important, for horse comfort, and for function as

an eating mechanism that everything works properly.

This is Lucy and we are going to start rasping Lucy’s

teeth. The diet Lucy is on, she gets her teeth checked

once a year. My job is to simply rasp off what Lucy

can’t naturally wear off. So I just introduce this rasp to

Lucy. These rasps are made of tungsten carbide steel

which is a fairly hard substance. The other rasps are

actually sharpened up with a diamond cutting wheel.

Page 14: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

Horses’ teeth are the hardest structure in their body.

They’re harder than their bones, so hard, that they

actually slab fracture. The enamel is quite a brittle

material even though it’s hard. It will shatter when it

gets too long. There’s a point at which horse’s teeth

get sharp and get no sharper, which is what happens

in the wild.

People often ask what happens in the wild. Most

Page 15: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

wild horses, only live to be seven or eight years of

age. There was a study done by the federal

government looking at our brumbies as a feral

nuisance and their life expectancy unfortunately is not

that good. The white stuff that you can see on the

rasp is actually sharp enamel points I’ve started to

take off Lucy’s upper molars. It is important that you

use an accredited and insured equine dentist and if

not, a properly trained veterinarian.

Page 16: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

If anyone comes on to your property to sedate your

horse who is not a veterinarian, you are breaking at

least two if not three laws. You may find that if

something goes wrong that you probably will have no

claim with insurance. It’s fairly rare that you need to

get a horse sedated in order to do its teeth. In that

case, legally it must be done by a properly trained

veterinarian.

Page 17: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

The situation where she was on a high grain diet, the

harder you feed a horse, say if it gets two hard feeds

a day like an eventer, a show horse or in some cases

a racehorse, you’d need to check her teeth more

often. Some racehorses are checked every eight to

ten weeks their whole racing life because of the high

grain diet. Most performance horses on two hard

feeds you’d need to look at least twice a year. One of

the many myths you’ll hear about horse dentistry is

Page 18: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

is that lay dental practitioners like myself struggle to

get up around the last sheet tooth, that’s where the

first ulcer will appear. These tools were specifically

designed to get up around that last sheet tooth on an

unsedated horse, standing here quite relaxed. You

can see it’s a fairly thin profile and there’s a special

angle to get to that point exactly. Once again, the

white material here is excess enamel, dentin and

cementum which I have rasped off this mare’s mouth.

Page 19: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

It is important to talk to your horse dentist about what

you do with your horse. If your horse is going to wear

a bit, the type of job that we need to do on their teeth

is vastly different to say a brood mare who would

never wear a bit. We need to change the shape of the

teeth nearest the bit to make it as comfortable for the

horse as possible while it is being either ridden or

driven. If we have a look in Lucy’s mouth, you will see

we have the upper jaw, the lower jaw and the tongue.

Page 20: Equine Dentistry: Equine Teeth Cleaning with Equine Dentist Mark Burnell

There is no room for a bit. So it is crucial that your bit

fits, that it’s comfortable and your horse’s teeth are

done appropriately. She’s got good bite, good

occlusion and Lucy’s ready to be ridden today.