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Horse World. Barn Dogs. Ride along with a veterinarian. Basic training with David O'Connor. Beyond the Saddle Podcast. The Jurga Report. Equine Disease Alerts. Properties for Sale. Our Sister Sites. American Cowboy. Dressage Today. Practical Horseman. Whilst it is ideal to not breed any animals with faults, if we all did this, then there would be no foals next year! So with the parrot mouth condition, one strategy could be to not re-mate a mare to a particular stallion if a parrot mouthed foal is produced by that mating.
In improving a breed, we should always aim to breed animals with similar positives, but different negatives. It always amazes me to watch and see how even severely parrot mouthed horses can eat short grass and do amazingly well in body condition.
I know one good horseman who actually believes that parrot mouth horses are usually very athletic! You may not realise but the great galloper Kingston Town had a parrot mouth. The real problems with being parrot mouthed are due to the fact that horses' teeth are hypsodont teeth — that means that they have long crowns up in the bone and continue to erupt or move into the mouth throughout life — up to a point where there is no more tooth left to erupt into the mouth.
If they are not opposing another tooth, they continue to erupt into the mouth to a point where they are a problem and dig into the opposite jaw etc. Horses' teeth do not grow indefinitely like rabbits' teeth, but for some time they continue to erupt into the mouth — with the purpose being to replace the tooth which is worn away during the chewing process.
Because a paddock grazing horse may on average chew approximately 20 million times per year, the highly repeated grinding of tooth on tooth, or tooth onto fibrous feed material will lead to wearing away of the tooth. Thus new tooth needs to erupt into the mouth to replace the tooth which has been worn away. This tooth eruption process usually continues up until the horse is 20 years of age — but sometimes more and sometimes less.
It is this fact that there is only so much tooth available to be used in a horse's life, that the teeth — if normal height and angle, should NOT have their grinding surfaces ground smooth by an equine dental practitioner. Nature provided the horse with teeth made from three different substances — enamel, dentin and cementum — which all wear away at different rates.
This produces a rough grinding surface which will effectively crush feed ready for digestion. Smoothing of the tooth's grinding surface will often render a horse in pain and unable to chew its food properly for days to weeks — a very disturbing situation — especially for the horse! What I am saying is not to be confused with the fact that the waste tooth eg sharp enamel points, tall teeth, hooks, waves, ramps, excessive transverse ridges etc, should not be removed or reduced at a dental visit.
So what happens if opposing teeth don't line up properly? The eruption process of teeth works fine if the teeth all line up even and oppose one another. But if they are not matched, then the tooth which is not opposed will continue to erupt into the mouth and become longer and longer. As the elongating tooth or teeth become more prominent, they may cause the tooth to be moved or forced out of its normal position and they also may restrict the whole jaw's normal RCM rostro-caudal movement whilst eating or when ridden.
Some examples of the secondary effects of parrot mouth are elongated lower incisors — where the lowers may cause ulceration of the roof of the mouth's palate lining mucosa.
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