COUNTY LINE FARM

3518 COUNTY LINE ROAD MARENGO, IL 60152  (815)378-7186 or (815)378-7200

You feed good quality hay, grain and water to satisfy all the nutritional needs of your horse. Good shelter, current on vaccinations and wormed regularly. That is still not quite enough! So many of us over look having our horses teeth checked. A horse dropping grain, head tossing, loosing weight or perhaps problems on the bit. These are just a few things that say something is wrong.

I recommend that all horses have there teeth checked every 6 months. If your horse has not had a through  dental exam with in the last 6 months, chances are very high that there are points on the outside of the upper premolars and molars (cheek teeth) which are causing either discomfort or even worse. Regular routine maintenance will keep you and your horse happy.

In the late 1800's early 1900's Equine Dentistry was very popular, as in that time we used our horses to get to work, now we have cars. Care of the horse was no longer as important. Hopefully we are learning more and I hope this page helps and educates us all a little bit.

  Full-mouth speculum

   Cutting of canine teeth - The canine teeth can become to long, which can cause soft tissue damage and interfere with the bit

   A horse with Parrot Mouth

  A horse with tarter - The yellow color is the tarter around the tooth. This should be removed to prevent further problems

  Horse with Hooks - The Hooks were an inch long, making it imposable for this horse to chew it's food properly. It is now gaining weight

   Horse with Ramps - This is a Ramp because it is the bottom tooth causing the problems. You can see there are sores on this horses tongue from the bad teeth. OUCH! The picture to the left is the before, the one on the right is after it was corrected. The sores should be gone after a few days

Incisor Reduction: The front teeth become to long, so the cheek teeth can't come together to grind food. Reducing or shortening them gives life-saving relief.

Performance Float: After the basics of removing offending points, the front of the first cheek teeth, the ones right behind the bit, are rounded off giving a noticeable improvement in performance.

Wave Reduction: Waves are "humps" in the line of the dental arcade from over long cheek teeth (and the opposing short ones). Leveling these defects prevents the undesirable "tooth grinding into bone" seen too often in older horses.

David Ihssen is a graduate of The American School of Equine Dentistry & Member of the International Association of Equine Dentistry.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to ask and I will reply as soon as possible:

   HOME  BOARDING  EQUINE DENTAL  STALLIONS  FOR SALE FOALS PHOTO'S

PHOTO'S 1 GATES  LESSONS  LINKS  CONTACT US

FOR PROBLEMS OR QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS WEB PAGE CONTACT: CLFARM@DLS.NET