Teething Troubles!

There was something odd about Faith this afternoon. When I finally managed to drag myself out into the blistering cold to do the mucking out, she gave me a big neigh and mooched over to the yard gate, and stood there looking fed up for about half an hour.

Eventually, when I got them in at about 5pm, I could see she wasn’t quite herself. She was very restless when I was grooming her, but still pretty cooperative. But there was something odd about the way she was taking treats from my hand, and bizarrely she seemed to be getting strands of hay stuck in her teeth.

My first thought was mild choke, but her gullet was perfectly relaxed, and she wasn’t having any trouble swallowing. But my mind just kept going back to the way she was taking her treats, it was just odd.

Anyway, I left her to have some hay while I poo picked the field. I was about halfway round, when I had an epiphany, her teeth, she must be losing one of her teeth! Now I wasn’t certain, as I didn’t have a particularly clear idea about when horses start to replace their milk teeth, but I thought the theory was worth investigating.

So when I got back to the yard, Faith had eaten most of her hay, and was standing at the stable door waiting for me to put her stable rug on. So I rugged her up, and when I had finished I held a treat up to her nose so that she had to stretch out her top lip to get it. Sure enough, her left central incisor was tilting backwards into her mouth. I was pretty confident that she hadn’t had a knock or a kick to it, as there was no sign of trauma or swelling, just a slightly tilted tooth.

So instead of her normal HiFi Lite and high fibre cubes for tea, I gave her just high fibre cubes soaked in some warm water to make a mash. She seems to be managing her hay fine, as it is pretty short chopped hay in this bale. When I went back into the house, I checked my vet book, and it did say that at around 2 ½ years, a horse will cast it’s central incisors. Now Faith is only 2 years 4 months, but I always thought she was precocious!

So my little girl is growing up, and I am doing my best to put aside thoughts of her potentially choking on her loose teeth. As mum pointed out to me with a slightly despairing air, horses have been casting their milk teeth for millions of years without choking on them, and Faith will be just fine!