Elderly Horses Teeth and Why she can no longer eats hay?

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PeterNatt

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I am trying to understand the mechanics of why my elderly horse (aged 27) appears to no longer be able to eat hay? I have tried different types of hay including meadow hay. If she tries to eat hay she quips and the hay comes out of her mouth and is dropped on the ground in small sausage roll shapes. She appears to be able to eat short grass and happily eats her hard feed . She has all her teeth. Is it because the grinding surfaces of her back teeth no longer make contact because they have become ground down and/or no longer grow and/or is it because she has hooks and ramps on her teeth and because of them can no longer chew in a normal manner? Is it because hay is in long pieces and she can no longer chop it or grind it in to smaller sections/pieces? Any help to understand what is going on would be much appreciated.
 
This is one you need a GOOD EDT or vet who KNOWS teeth for. It could be any of the possible causes you mention - and a few more beside. Tere are a couple of possible substitutes for hay - Grazon is one I find good for the oldies - it's pure grass. Just bulk up her hard feeds with it. But a thorough examination might reveal a fixable problem.
 
Hi, my horse ended up with only two teeth in her head and they didn't meet! She made it to 32.

it could be any of the above. Red used to suck her hay and then spit it out. It was difficult to keep weight on but I used calm and condition and fast fibre mixed with a selection of alfa a products. She had big buckets of the soft food to eat when in the stable but like yours grazed grass fine. The vet came up every six months to check her. It is possible to maintain weight but it does get progressively more difficult.
 
it could be many things, long teeth loose teeth, sharp teeth, tooth pain, mouth ulcers, tooth root infection or possibly wave mouth the list goes on, you need a good Equine Dental Technician to find out the cause and do what they can to make things work as well as is possible. It may be that you need to change what you feed once the EDT has been, I have known many oldies that could eat grass as long as it was not too short but could not eat hay, they were kept on good grass as much of the time as possible and supplemented with soaked grass nuts, soaked sugar or speedibeet and a mix or nuts for veterans.

I cannot stess enough an EDT is needed as soon as you can whilst it is not an emergency it can be difficult to get the weight back on the oldies once is comes off
 
My old pony has a similar problem, but he has also lost half a dozen molars over the years so chewing must be a bit hit and miss!

Maybe the extra power required to grind down hard stalks is just too much like hard work for an old mouth, as mine can manage grass easily but will only eat small amounts of very soft meadow hay. Interestingly he has been given access to lots of grass this summer, including both front and back lawn (husband not impressed!) and he is a good weight, possibly a little fat, yet he has no sign of laminitis while in previous years I have had to restrict his grazing.

So my theory is that he isn't properly chewing the grass either but it is more palatable and easy to swallow in a less chewed state, and it passes through quite well, but perhaps he doesn't get as many nutrients from it as he would, which is keeping him slimmer.

I have quite a collection of his teeth that various EDTs have gently removed (they were all wobbly and came out with a gentle tug) and I will compare the surfaces - perhaps I can take a good photo and we can compare the surfaces to see what is different about them.
 
We have a 28 year old pony on our yard, does the same with grass and hay!!! Dentist said nothing amiss with teeth that he has left but...... Pony has arthritis in the jaw!!! This stops him moving her mouth correctly, he is now on bute to ease the discomfort, this is all the vet said we can do for him... Could be his last summer if he can't put weight on, he is now on 4 sloppy build up feeds a day..
 
Goldenstar said:
Has she perhaps jaw arthritis that can stop them eating hay .
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I was thinking this - My mare has arthritic problems with her jaw and no amount of work on her teeth will help that. In fact, opening their mouths to have her teeth looked at can make it a lot worse. It might be worth asking your vet to check her jaw before investigating her teeth any further
 
Their teeth get smaller through wear; Food lodges itself inside their mouth so they can find it difficult to chew; A bit of chaff can dislodge it. If they are still having difficulty then get a EDT out to check, but I suspect because of her age you may either have to keep her out on grass and or if stabled bucket feeds of FF/chaff/grass nuts etc.

I'm going through the same with my 23 year old, teeth are checked every 6 months, he's happy though and not losing weight
 
One of my ponies does exactly the same. I have had two etd's to him and they both say his teeth are good for his age. Vet has seen him too and can't see any problems in his mouth. He preferes to graze and doesn't eat much hay. He is up to weight, if not a bit over, so I am not too worried about it yet.
 
I have just spent an interesting couple of minutes trying to grind a stalk of hay between two discarded molars. Do you think I need to get out more?

The result - the teeth tables are worn down and are as smooth as glass so made no impression on the stalk of hay whatsoever. Obviously I can't repeat the experiment with two younger molars as I don't have any of those laying around but I suspect the smoothness to be a large part of the problem, along with possible jaw arthritis. Pony in question is currently standing at my patio door begging for bread, which he has no problem chewing :)
 
DuckToller said:
I have just spent an interesting couple of minutes trying to grind a stalk of hay between two discarded molars. Do you think I need to get out more?

The result - the teeth tables are worn down and are as smooth as glass so made no impression on the stalk of hay whatsoever. Obviously I can't repeat the experiment with two younger molars as I don't have any of those laying around but I suspect the smoothness to be a large part of the problem, along with possible jaw arthritis. Pony in question is currently standing at my patio door begging for bread, which he has no problem chewing :)
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Most definitely! You have no life :(

Years ago a TB racehorse came to me with the message, he can''t eat long food, turn all his hay into chaff! I got the dentist in who checked and rasped his teeth - no change, got him back - he checked the horses mouth and said everythings fine. So fed horse as ex trainer suggested.

A year later I moved north and the EDT didn't travel that distance so I got a new one. Well what a revelation! Old EDT never used a gag and he was the person who had cared for this horses teeth for several years. New EDT put on gag, shone in the torch and there at the back was a molar growing up into the roof of the mouth!

2 hours of power grinding later and the tooth was once again the same level as the rest - horse now eating anything and everything, putting on weight and an easy horse to now ride.

Moral of the story - Always ensure you use a EDT that uses a gag to open the mouth. Another note, evidently much damage can be done to the joints of the jaw when people use the tongue to retrain the horse.
 
Doesn't sound too daft! My first pony spat a couple of his molars out (age 27 ish), and they were super smooth on the top surface. He was on mostly soft food anyway as he'd had teeth removed as a teenager, so I wouldn't be surprised that long stuff could cause a problem while short can be rolled around and swallowed.

Be interesting to hear what an EDT has to say.
 
Many thanks for your replies. Yes! It would be interesting to hear from an Equine Dental Technician or a vet specialising in Equines teeth.
From what I can understand in elderley horses teeth the occlusal surfaces (grinding surface of the tooth) of the premolar and molar teeth eventually wear smooth with many years of use and therefore they no longer are capable to grind up the food in to fine particles.
 
Agree with the others about getting an expert in quickly to check her teeth. I was wondering how she is with soft haylage? That may be easier for her to chew than dry hay. I would suggest soaking her hay, but you don't want to lose any nutritional value. There are lots of products on the market nowadays for oldies that can't eat hay. One of my favourites is Pure Feeds condition pellets. They really do build up weight and are very palatable when soaked without having any molasses or sugars. They don't need long either. Just a minute and they are ready to eat.
 
My old mare (35) has regular dentals by either a well recommended EDT or my lovely vet who did the EDT training (many vets aren't the best TBH) and over the 6 years she has been here she has lost around 5 molars. Molars have only a certain depth and as they get older they wear away so there is very little left under the gum. The result is she has no effective opposing pairs with which to grind her food, so she quids grass as well as hay/haylage now. My dental people have kept me up to speed on the progress of her dentition and so I have been able to adjust her diet accordingly - soaked grass pellets and unmollassed beet with supplements now.
Yours needs to be checked by a GOOD dental technician to see whether there is any treatment which can help, such as rasping or removing molars, or advise you on where it is up to. There may well be improvement to be gained with some treatment so best get her seen as soon as you can - and get your technician to show you and explain to you what is going on so you are sure they are dealing effectively with all the issues.
 
My 27 year old mare doesn't quid although couple years ago she wasn't eating much hay due to a loose tooth, tooth was removed and now she eats lots of hay with no problems despite also having open diastemas on both sides of her lower jaw. Then theres my 4 year old mare, she quid hay for two years, sometimes very badly, despite having lots of dental work and being seen every couple months or so. I was told it was normal for her problem (she did/does have lots of diastemas). She saw a specialist (Chris Pearce) in March and it turns out the reason for her quidding was because some of her teeth were overgrown and some unworn. Because her mouth was so painful she had changed the way she ate so some teeth were not been used. The angle of a horses teeth should be 30 degrees and hers were about 45 degrees or something like that, some of the overgrown egde was removed off the teeth and straight away she was eating without quidding.
You need to find a very good dentist or dentist vet.
 
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