Why do horses need their teeth checked by an Equine Dental Technician, when wild horses cope without it?
Breeding Over several thousand years we have been selectively breeding the horse for attractive traits such as speed or ability to jump. What we have not done however, is to selectively breed horses to have good dentition and so, unlike the wild horse, there is no survival of the fittest. Horses that would not be able to survive in the wild are used to breed and so we have actually bred dental problems into the horse. Feeding- The teeth of the horse are also anisognathic in nature, which means that the mandibular teeth are narrower than the maxillary teeth. The horse eats on one side of its mouth at a time in the following motion. The lower jaw drops down and out to the side. It then moves up, crushing the food between the teeth and finally moves back to the start point, grinding the food between the teeth. Sharp enamel spikes develop on the outside edges of the upper teeth and the inside edges of the lower teeth when the horse does not move its lower jaw far enough to the side and the
