23/10/2024
Very informative post about different feed types and their effect on horses teeth 🦷🦷
I’ve had a few interesting cases recently so I have been distracted from the FAQs series I’ve been working my way through. Rest assured though, I’m collecting photos and images and I will slowly get through them all.
The next question I’ll answer is how different food types affect the teeth. Quite a few asked this but in different ways and regarding different issues but I will answer generally and try to cover everything. As usual it will probably be a long one sorry 🤦♀️
I’m lucky enough to have a very stable client base which means I see the same horses routinely from being a youngster to old age. I’m also lucky to live in an area with a massively varying landscape (NW England). From well draining sandy soil to heavy water logged clay, from high altitude moorland to the richest flattest lushest green grass fields, from those in fields all year round to livery yards with restricted grazing to track systems with none. I see the same horses move around across all sorts of environments and I get to see how these environments affect their teeth over time and back again. However this post is very much my opinion and experience based on my patients. I can’t speak for the rest of the world or other professionals.
I think I will start with forage, we have grass, hay, haylage, silage and straw. In real life it’s never that simple though, is it 😳
Grass - there is a very wide variety of grass. From the “wild” horse’s natural diet of the coarse, tough moorland grass all the way through to the lush green dairy cow grass. Over the years I have regularly seen the feral national trust fells and a lot of native ponies turned out on the moors full time, and I can honestly say these ponies have the very best teeth (if we don’t consider those with conformational faults). This tough and sparse moorland grass wears their teeth as nature intended. They have little human interference and usually don’t get decay and hardly get sharp points. Most of the work I do on these equids are due to conformational issues (eg Welsh As bred for the pug face).
Lush green grass differs in that the horses do get sharp on this forage, I assume this is because it is easier to eat than the moorland grass. However any grass fed horses seem to have significantly better teeth than the dried forage fed. Horse with diastema for example do incredibly well living out on a grass only diet. I almost never find grass in diastema, it’s always dried forage. Despite the higher sugar of lush grass, it does not seem to cause tooth decay like refined sugars do.
Silage - by this I mean the very wet, heavy, smelly forage. Sometimes it is sold as haylage but the moisture levels are equal to that of silage. I hate this stuff and not just to handle but as a horse’s forage. I find this causes excessive tooth decay and very quickly results in diastema (gaps) forming due to the peripheral caries (decay) eating the outside of the teeth away. It’s also not good for the rest of the horse either! I would advise avoiding this like the plague. It’s cattle food.
Haylage - most of the horses in my area are fed haylage. We are a very wet area and it’s not often that we get the weather to produce hay (the difference is the amount of time the grass is given to dry before baling) so it is much more expensive. When a horse has normal teeth, with no issues and the haylage isn’t too wet, dental wise they do fine on haylage. When a horse does have dental issues like displaced teeth or diastema, haylage seems to get stuck far more than hay. It seems stickier and wraps around the teeth. I would advise against feeding haylage to anything with diastema. I have also found that older horses with worn teeth seem to struggle more with haylage than hay. Owners often feed haylage to try and bulk up old horses as it is higher in calories, but actually they do better on hay as they find it easier to chew and get more out of it. I find haylage and lush grass are about the same for producing sharp points.
Hay - for the most part I find it’s pretty similar for producing sharp points to haylage and lush grass, particularly when it is quite coarse. When it is short and soft, I find those with diastema and old horses tend to find it easier to eat. Interestingly, I see a marked difference when soaked. I can always tell when a patient has been fed soaked hay as they suddenly get far far sharper than usual. To the point that I often have to shorten their routine interval or they start to cut their cheeks! I can only assume it is much easier to chew after soaking and so doesn’t wear the teeth correctly. I tend to advise my clients to feed some good quality dry straw along side the soaked hay to help with the teeth as well as their gut and boredom. A 50/50 diet of soaked hay/dry straw has been shown to reduce weight without causing ulcers or any other health issues. When fed with soaked hay in particular, the risk of impaction is much less due to the increased water intake. Obviously it needs introducing slowly and to be of good quality.
Straw - I feel like I’ve already covered this now but I do find it wears the teeth very nicely, more so than hay or haylage. I do many donkeys that are fed a straw only diet and they don’t get as sharp as they use to on hay/haylage.
So then on to hard feed, there is such a wide range!! It’s hard to know where to begin.
Chaff - Straw seems like a good cross over. A lot of chaff is straw based but chopped shorter (it amuses me when someone tells me it isn’t safe to feed straw and yet they feed their horses straw chaff 🤷🏼♀️), or it can be Alfalfa based. When an old horse is very short on teeth so that even the soft hay is difficult to eat, I find they manage the soft straw chaff quite well. It can be fed in huge quantities safely and helps keep their guts healthy where mash can’t. Obviously once the teeth have worn beyond chaff then a soup diet is all that remains (I will write a separate post on geriatric equids to cover this). Things to consider when feeding chaff would be equids with diastema should not be fed chaff, it will get stuck in the gaps and can be spiky and painful. The other thing is check the ingredients as a lot of chaff is coated in molasses or cane sugar which should be avoided at all costs.
Cereals - mixes, cubes, muesli, mashes, most feed stuffs have some form of cereals. For a normal horse, this isn’t a problem. However it does affect the pH of the mouth, encouraging the growth of bacteria in the biofilm which can make peripheral caries (decay) worse in those that are susceptible. For this reason ideally cereals should be avoided for horses with diastema (gaps) or decay.
Refined sugars eg Molasses/cane sugars - I find it amazing how few owners consider the sugars they feed their horses. Heavily molassed feeds (some chaffs contain 24%+ molasses!!) and sugar based licks can destroy a horse’s teeth in a matter of weeks. Imagine you eat a boiled sweet every day (even if thats only for 10mins once a day) and didn’t brush your teeth, how long would it take for you to get tooth ache? Not long at all! I have had physios tell owners to use treacle licks for their daily stretches and within a matter of weeks they’ve required extensive and expensive dental work to try and manage the damage done. Which takes years to recover! I also regularly see horses on box rest where the owner gives a treacle lick as a boredom breaker, same thing. Some owners have a titbit obsession and give the horses a packet of polos a day, same thing. While some horses seem to manage and have teeth that can cope with this, the majority of horses cannot. Feed-caused caries is probably the most common pathology I see and it’s so infuriating to treat (I will do a post on diastema and peripheral caries separately). Feed companies can’t sell feed that horses won’t eat, so they add molasses and sugars to make them tasty in a cheap way. It is so damaging to the teeth so please check the label even if it says "light" or "lami/ulcer approved".
Apples/Carrots/Swede etc - I don't find natural sugars anywhere near as damaging for the teeth as the refined sugars. Just as I personally don't get that film over my teeth when eating fruit or carrots that I do when eating a boiled sweet.
Bread - this is a pet hate of mine. Particularly white bread. When a client has given their horse bread before I do their teeth, it is a nightmare to get rid of so I can visualise the teeth. It is so sticky!! I can’t say I’ve noticed these horses having bad teeth as a result, I assume they clear it fairly quickly, but it’s just annoying 😅
I think I’ve covered pretty much everything here but if I’ve missed anything, let me know below.
And remember routine dentistry is basic care, whatever the animal is fed on, it’s not just a luxury!
Mobile Veterinary Dental Practice for Horses, Ponies and Donkeys in Cambridgeshire and East England
