Is it possible that she is this much younger?

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dreambigpony

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So today my mare had her booster vaccinations. I've owned her for 3.5 years and believe her to be now 7 (according to passport). However vet did a general check over and had a look at her teeth and said "she is such a baby still". I was very confused and asked her how old she thinks and she said no older than 4.5. She then asked the other vet to look and he said the exact same. They said she is still missing two teeth which haven't come through yet.
It would kind of make sense as she came from a dealer with not a particularly good reputation. However when I've had her teeth done, the dentist has never said this before.
It would have made her 1.5 when I bought her?? Backed, broken and certainly didn't look as young as that however she is a cob and wouldn't exactly look as gangly as other breeds at thst age.
Left me very confused and don't know what to think!
 
That does seem quite a gap!

Was she passported already when you bought her? if so and your vet scanned the microchip successfully to match the one in the passport then the date of passport issue would be the lastest possible date she could have been born and very unlikely to have been chipped on day one.
 
I very much doubt she was a yearling when you bought her, she would have been very immature, far more than a 3 year old would have been, she would have grown a lot bigger not just the finishing off you expect with a 3 year old, the missing teeth are probably a red herring she may have damaged her jaw and the adult teeth may never come through.
I would ask your dentist what he thinks next time he comes, he may have an explanation for the missing teeth, which teeth are they?
 
Aging by teeth is not always as accurate as we like to think, the kids pony was aged by a dentist and a vet as being 7 when she was 13. She is registered and I know a lot of her past so I know the age on her paperwork is accurate.
 
My dentist said my horse was 12 and not a day over. I know he is 16 cause he has a passport from birth lol
 
Ageing by teeth is not an exact science. If she really is the age your vet is suggesting I think it would have been blindingly obvious if she was only a yearling when you bought her and would have been picked up at the vetting.
 
my Welsh section A is seven years old and only has four front teeth at the top, the other two have not come through and the dentist says they probably will never appear, I know his full history apart from a few months so know his age is 100% accurate
 
I've had a similar experience. Vet school were convinced that he was 14 - yet at that point we'd had him for 14 years. Bought and vetted as a four year old.
 
equi said:
My dentist said my horse was 12 and not a day over. I know he is 16 cause he has a passport from birth lol
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My vet (and 2 of his colleagues) aged my one mare as 'no older than 10' when they gave her an external and internal onceover at the foal scanning stage - she was 21 and was expecting foal number 9 at the time. Passport confirms, as does import paperwork for her dam who carried her inside her when she came in from America!

OP - we have had instances in racing where allegations have been made that horses racing in a certain age category are actually older (anything up to 12 months) and have been falsely registered (potentially easier where same person owns sire and dam). One experienced vet who was questioned about aging a horse by teeth said we wouldn't find a vet in the land who would stand up in court and testify that a horse was X age not Y age because of its teeth as its not black and white.
 
eggs said:
Ageing by teeth is not an exact science. If she really is the age your vet is suggesting I think it would have been blindingly obvious if she was only a yearling when you bought her and would have been picked up at the vetting.
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As a yearling she would have had a full set of baby teeth, small and white, at 5 the horse also has a full set of teeth but the size and colour are different - the mistake does happen - far more than you would expect.
 
From Equus magazine:

Though veterinarians and other professionals grumbled over the years that Galvayne's aging formulas didn't seem to apply 100 percent to all horses, anecdotal objections did little to shake the faith most horsemen had in the technique. Then, in 1994, J.P. Walmsley, a British veterinarian, examined the teeth of a number of registered Thoroughbred horses between five and seven years of age and discovered a greater deviation from Galvayne's dental patterns than he had expected. For example, some of the five-year-olds had the teeth of a four-year-old, while others had mouths that would pass for eight.

The following year, six British researchers did another dental study, in which a number of experienced equine practitioners were asked to age horses--all registered and thus of known age--on the basis of their teeth alone. Results showed that with immature horses (age five and under), dental growth patterns differed enough from the expected to cause the experts to err in their estimates by as much as two years and nine months. Mature horses between five and 10 years of age were even more likely to be misjudged: Eight- and 10-year-olds were estimated by some experienced clinicians to be between 13 and 15; one six-year-old was judged by one veterinarian to be 12; two eight-year-olds were pegged at 15 by several veterinarians. Some much older horses, on the other hand, passed for mere youths: A 17-year-old was judged to be nine by one practitioner, and a 15-year-old was aged as seven by another.

One reason for the uncertainty in aging came to light in 1996, when three Belgian researchers examined the teeth of 570 horses representing several different types of horses--Arabians, Belgian draft horses and trotters. All were registered and of known ages, ranging from two to 25 years. The researchers found that the rate of dental wear was markedly different for each of the breeds--slower in Arabs, faster in the draft horses, somewhere in between in the trotters. Tooth composition and enamel hardness, both heritable traits, made the horses "age" at different rates. The study concluded that accurate aging by dentition has to be based on breed-specific guidelines.
 
I've had my two since foals, one is mature dentally and appears slightly older than her 5yrs, the other is at least a year behind - to the point where the dentist queried that he was the same age a couple of months back when he last visited. I find it fascinating to watch their teeth develop from babies!
 
Aging by the teeth has been (or should be!) largely proven to be unreliable. At best the teeth can indicate whether the horse is immature or mature, but not precise aging. People often get bent out of shape when they have vets or other "experts" telling them that horses are younger or older than they were sold as, but the only reliable thing is a passport with a date of birth.
 
Sounds unlikely unless you don't know how to distinguish a youngster from a more mature horse.

Vets aren't always right. A couple of years ago mine commented on my then 18 year old 'filly'.
 
I think maybe there are breed differences too-both of my lusitanos were very slow in getting their adult teeth ie you'd have aged them 12-18 months younger than they were between 4-6yo (both registered). The Exmoor had his adult teeth through well before he was 4yo and I had him as a weanling. The first luso and the Exmoor have both had their ages queried by vets.
 
Both my horse and my share horse are 20 on their passports. We know share horse's breeder and know his exact birthday. We know less about mine so not certain of his age. Dentist would put them at 7 years apart - share horse at 15 and mine at 22.
 
Tnavas said:
As a yearling she would have had a full set of baby teeth, small and white, at 5 the horse also has a full set of teeth but the size and colour are different - the mistake does happen - far more than you would expect.
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I didn't mean her teeth but her physical shape/musculature as a yearling old be quite different to an adult horse.
 
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