Vikki Fowler - Veterinary Equine Dental Technician

08/06/2026

Every horse needs regular dental work. I hope this is widely known by now. But just in case, I'll repeat it again.

We have domesticated horses. We have changed their head shapes from the wild horses. We have changed their diets, including those that live out grazing, it's mostly on soft grass that is not like their wild diet, and hay is even less natural. We are responsible for their existence and we are responsible for keeping them pain free.

This photos are just a few horses with good mouths, straight teeth, good diets and still they become so sharp that they have lacerated their cheeks due to being overdue their routine dentals. This is super easy to prevent. Once or twice a year dental appointments will stop this happening.

Remember routine dentistry is basic care, not a luxury!

06/06/2026

I thought I would share this slide from one of our lectures today at the BAEDT Congress. This was a talk given by Spillers feeds. As you may have noticed from my page, I am very very keen on making sure horses are given adequate forage/fibre. Not just for their dental health but also their gut health and mental health.

I'd particularly like to draw attention to what "dry matter" is. Recently I have been regularly told a horse is being fed 1.5% of their body weight (BW). But this recommendation is for DRY MATTER. This does not mean before soaking!! Hay is 15% moisture even before soaking. Dry matter is something measured in a laboratory when every little molecule of moisture is pulled out. It is not a real life figure. In real life it is closer to 1.8% BW of hay or 2.4% BW of haylage (haylage has a much higher moisture content).

Something I learnt today is that soaking hay actually reduces the dry matter content and so you need to feed even more of it, more like over 2% BW. Obviously this is weighed BEFORE soaking.

We talk about dry matter because of all this variability in our forages. Dry matter is a way of standardising the requirement. If you are unclear on what the dry matter of your forage is, I would advise reaching out to an independent nutritionalist to help formulate a healthy diet for your horse.

The second point I would raise is that this 1.5% dry matter is about fibre, not calories. As humans we are use to talking about how many calories we should eat. We don't really pay much attention to our fibre intake, even though we should eat over 25g of fibre a day ourselves. For horses, fibre is the important figure. If we drop below this 1.5% BW dry matter, the horse's gut is not getting enough fibre to function properly. This can leave them susceptible to things like stomach ulcers and colic. We can reduce their calories as much as possible but we must be very very careful to never drop below this 1.5% BW dry matter. Effective ways of reducing the calories in their forage are things like soaking hay, feeding unfertilised hay, and feeding good quality straw (replacing up to 50% of their hay).

When talking about geriatric equines with poor teeth that cannot eat hay, haylage or straw, we must still obey this 1.5% BW dry matter. This is a lot more food than most owners think. For example 24 x Stubb scoops of happy hoof a day!!

06/06/2026

As a continuation from the previous post about old horses.

Here on the left hand side we have a 32 year old thoroughbred that has had her teeth looked after all of her life by a qualified EDT and then myself (vet and qualified EDT). On the right we have a 27 year old Welsh A pony with a "sketchy" dental history. As you can see, despite being much older and much larger, the TB has perfect teeth whereas the Welsh A has already lost a large number of his. The TB can eat her hay as normal but the Welsh A needs a hay replacer diet.

Conformation of the teeth absolutely has an impact, but whether good or poor conformation, horses keep their teeth much longer if they have regular, good quality dentistry. Nowadays we expect our horses to live well into their 20s and 30s so we need to be extra vigilant about looking after their teeth. Feeding adequate qualities of hay replacer is a very expensive business!

So why does regular dentistry help the teeth last longer?
Dentistry involves a lot of biomechanics, similar to farriery. We aim to maintain balance across the whole mouth. In the same way that unbalanced feet will result in lameness issues, small dental imbalances can spiral to become major issues surprisingly quickly, which causes pain and tooth loss.

If I take a really basic example, sometimes one tooth becomes dominant over its opposing partner. There are several ways this can happen, even in a horse fed a natural diet and with good oral conformation.
- Sometimes when the adult teeth erupt in a young horse, they don't always erupt at the same time. If one comes through before its partner, it can become taller than the others before its partner manages to meet it.
- In old horses, the teeth slow their growth with age, but sometimes one tooth slows before its partner and the partner over grows.
- Another cause is when one tooth has a very mild deformity resulting in less enamel than its partner, and the partner overpowers it due to being harder and stronger.
- We can also see teeth with small chip fractures that doesn't kill the tooth, but does reduce the surface area allowing its partner to overpower it.

As you can see, this can happen to any horse over time, even if the teeth look straight, even if the horse lives a natural life, and even if the horse receives regular dental care. However when the horse receives regular care, the practitioner will address these overgrowths before they become issues. It might just be a millimetre here or there if caught early enough. Without correction, this spirals and causes further problems like diastema (gaps) or displacements (wonky teeth) due to the extra forces being put on the tooth pushing it over. This is particularly a problem in older horses where the crown is as long as the root. When the tooth becomes taller than all of the others, it is put under extra pressure and so the tooth is very slowly wobbled loose until it falls out.

This is just one example of the ways teeth can be lost. There are many others!

Having your horses teeth regularly looked after by a qualified professional pays dividends in the long run. The small payment once or twice a year will save you a fortune as the horse ages. Not just by preventing expensive referral procedures but also in hay replacer feed! Well worth it.

Remember routine dentistry is basic care, not a luxury.

05/06/2026

It's the BAEDT Congress this weekend, you might spot my name in the name tags 😁 Always a fabulous weekend of learning and connecting.

02/06/2026

My little (16.2 😅) warmblood 2 year old, Jupiter, would like everyone to know that he is losing his very first baby tooth. Poor little man is feeling rather tired and hard done by. He turned 2 at the end of February so he is a little early. But they rarely read the textbooks.

I think now that it is much more common to have exact dates of birth and recorded ages for our horses, it's become more oobvious to me that ageing by the teeth is really not an exact science, it's basically educated guesswork and should be treated as a ballpark figure.

29/05/2026

I regularly have people tell me their old horses don't need doing because they don't have any teeth left. In 15 years, I have never seen a horse with no teeth. Even those over 40 years old usually have a few knocking about. Often I see horses with few or no usable pairs though.

Whenever I'm talking to an owner of an old horse or pony, I don't talk about how many teeth the horse has, I talk about how many usable pairs they have. A tooth without an opposing partner is no use for chewing. But it will continue to erupt with nothing opposite to wear it down. Unchecked they will continue to erupt until pressing into the opposite gum.

This means even horses and ponies that don't have any useful pairs of teeth remaining, still need their teeth treating yearly. This chap photographed (27yo) had over grown teeth that were stopping his useful teeth from meeting. Particularly his 411 (back, bottom arcade, his right).

Whilst he is missing a large number of teeth, this one over grown tooth, that is missing its partner, was stopping the useful ones he does have from being used. Unfortunately another was hanging on by a thread and required extraction too. As much as we want to keep their teeth in their mouths for as long as possible, once loose, a tooth causes a lot of pain until extracted.

Due to these missing teeth it is unlikely this chap will be able to manage to chew enough forage to sustain his weight, but the owner and I discussed suitable hay replacement feeds to introduce to get his weight back on. Now he is out of pain he will also try harder to eat the hay and grass he is given which will certainly help.

Remember old horses need routine dental work as part of their basic care, it is not a luxury!

It is also worth noting that those receiving great dental care all of their lives will keep their teeth for much longer than those that do not.

28/05/2026

Still one my favourite jobs 😅 cracking plaque off the canines. This little old man is lightly sedated but this does not cause them any pain. If left, it can cause gingivitis and gum recession. Luckily this chappy's teeth were fine underneath. The smell of the plaque was foul though, he'll be much happier now.

16/05/2026

If you have a horse with a small smile, a hanging cheek bit can work wonders for their comfort. Fabulous photos showing the reason why.

11/05/2026

It's definitely spring time in the UK! I'm feeling like every other dental is a youngster with wolf teeth to be extracted ready to start their working life 😮‍💨

06/02/2026

To sedate or not to sedate. Always an area of contention in the world of equine dentistry. This is a very good video explaining the thought process of the qualified EDTs in the UK.

Personally I am comfortable working on horses both sedated and unsedated. It takes an extra level of skill, horsemanship and strength to work on unsedated horses, as well as needing them to be cooperative and kept up to date with routine visits. I would rather someone that maybe hasn't got the strength and experience required, sedate to ensure they can do a good job. Although sedation doesn't automatically mean it's a good job being done.

There are many instances where sedation is absolutely necessary. I sedate 40-50% of the horses I see in a year. This might be due to their behaviour, to get a better look at something suspicious (usually with a camera) or because they are in pain.

To sedate or not ?The question of sedation for routine equine dental procedures is one that often sparks discussion. Every horse is an individual, and ensuri...