Horse dental care: how often, what to watch for, and who may do it

By Sebastien Kister

Last checked: 13 October 2026

"Once a year" is the answer you will hear, and for most adult horses it is what the veterinary bodies say too. What it leaves out: young and old horses need more, a dental exam is more than a rasp, a horse with a sore mouth may show nothing at all, and who is allowed to do the work depends on where you live.

How often: what the veterinary bodies say

So the yearly check is the floor, not the rule. The two ends of a horse's life are where it moves: a young horse is changing every tooth it has, and an old one is running out of tooth to wear.

The young horse: twenty-four teeth to change by five

A foal's milk teeth are replaced by permanent ones between about two and a half and five, which is why the AAEP asks for two exams a year in those years. The Merck Veterinary Manual gives the usual ages, "subject to considerable variation":

The permanent set is typically complete by five. Until then, caps that are loosening can irritate the mouth, and a young horse's discomfort can look like a training problem.

Wolf teeth are small vestigial first premolars that sit just in front of the cheek teeth, where the bit lies. They are common: in a study of 306 Thoroughbred yearlings, 72.9% had at least one. Taking them out is common too — in a survey of 854 owners in the UK and Ireland, 44% had them removed routinely — although the Merck manual says they "may or may not be associated with resistance to the bit", and the veterinary literature gives displaced or enlarged wolf teeth, and those in the lower jaw, as the clearer reasons.

The older horse: when the teeth wear out first

A horse's cheek teeth wear down over its life, and a horse can outlive them. The AAEP's guidelines for retirement facilities warn that worn grinding surfaces or periodontal disease reduce the ability to crush grain and forage and "may predispose" to colic or choke. Where chewing is impaired they suggest chopped hay, hay cubes or roughage pellets, soaked to make them easier to eat and to lower the risk of choke. A tooth that has lost its opposite has nothing to wear against and grows long, which the Merck manual says needs correcting every six to twelve months.

The other condition of old age is EOTRH (equine odontoclastic tooth resorption and hypercementosis), a painful disease of the incisors and canines. In a radiographic study of 142 horses aged ten and over, with an average age of 21, 94% showed changes and 62% moderate to severe ones; no horse over fourteen was free of them. It is not always clinical disease — one clinic found it in 10.1% of 838 dental patients — but the signs are worth knowing: weight loss, refusing hard treats, head shyness, avoiding the bit, dropping feed and dullness.

What goes wrong, and how often

• Sharp enamel points and hooks. The upper cheek teeth sit wider than the lower ones, so edges form where they do not meet. In 400 horses' heads examined at a Queensland abattoir, 55.3% had sharp enamel points and 43% hooks. Points on the cheek side are the ones linked to ulcers and pain; points on the tongue side very rarely cause ulcers.
• Diastemata — gaps between cheek teeth that trap food. Reported in anything from 8.7% of 932 horses to 49.9% of 471, depending on the population, and more common with age. Where they occur, food packs into nearly all of them and periodontal disease often follows: horses with diastemata had about four times the odds of periodontal disease in the larger study.
• Colic. The link with dental disease is less clear than it is often said to be. Horses with a known dental problem had higher odds of colic coming back in one study, and fewer dental checks a year went with colonic obstruction in another; but horses with impaction colic did not have worse teeth than other horses in a third.

Signs to watch for

The AAEP's list for owners:

• dropping feed, difficulty chewing, or excess saliva
• loss of body condition
• large or undigested particles in the manure — long stems or whole grain
• head tilting or tossing, fighting the bit
• problems under saddle
• a foul smell from the mouth or nostrils
• nasal discharge, or swelling of the face, jaw or mouth

And the line that matters most: some horses "simply adapt" and show none of them. A horse eating normally is not proof of a comfortable mouth, which is the whole case for the routine exam.

What a proper exam involves

A look at the front teeth and a feel along the cheeks is not a dental exam. The Merck manual describes one done with the horse sedated, a bright headlamp and a full-mouth speculum to hold the mouth open, adding that a dental mirror or endoscopic camera "greatly increases the quality" — the back teeth are a long way into a dark mouth. It also says that detailed record keeping "is a requirement", and the AAEP's guidelines ask for a dental chart for each horse, left with the owner.

The chart uses the modified Triadan system, which numbers every tooth, so findings can be compared from one exam to the next:

• the first digit is the quarter of the mouth: 1 upper right, 2 upper left, 3 lower left, 4 lower right — and 5 to 8 for the same quarters' milk teeth
• the last two digits count back from the middle: 01–03 incisors, 04 canine, 05 wolf tooth, 06–08 premolars, 09–11 molars

So "106" is the first cheek tooth on the upper right, and a note about a gap at "309–310" means between the fourth and fifth cheek teeth on the lower left. Keep the chart: the next person to look in the mouth needs the last one.

Does routine rasping help?

Rasping — "floating" in American English — takes the edges off teeth that wear unevenly, and an edge cutting the cheek clearly hurts. What it does for a healthy horse's weight and digestion has been tested, and the results are less dramatic than the usual claims:

• In a randomised trial of 56 pregnant mares, half floated and half not, there was no significant difference in weight gain, body condition score, feed digestibility or faecal particle size over 24 weeks (Carmalt and colleagues, 2004). A second trial in 34 mares found the same, and its authors concluded that the assumption that dental problems harm digestion "needs to be reevaluated".
• In 16 dressage horses scored blind, floating brought "no significant improvement" in performance, and a sham-controlled study of 38 stallions found no improvement in rideability.
• Some smaller studies since have found changes: better energy digestibility in 9 horses, better fibre digestibility in 12 ponies, shorter fibre in the manure in 30 horses — and no change in blood nutrients in 16 mares.

The fair reading is that the exam finds problems and the rasp corrects edges that cause pain, which is reason enough. A routine float is not a proven way to put condition on a healthy horse, and a horse losing weight needs a vet, not only a rasp.

Who may work on a horse's teeth

Wherever you are, the sedatives a full exam uses — detomidine, xylazine and the like — are prescription-only and come through a vet. Beyond that the rules differ a great deal.

• United Kingdom. The Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 reserves veterinary surgery to registered vets, and no exemption order covers dental work. BEVA groups dental procedures into three categories. Category 1 — examining, removing sharp points and overgrowths of up to 4 mm with hand rasps, removing loose caps and tartar — may be done by lay people; BEVA says after recognised training, while the technicians' association BAEDT says by anyone. Category 2 — removing loose teeth or fragments with negligible periodontal attachment, removing erupted, undisplaced wolf teeth under direct and continuous veterinary supervision, and using motorised instruments to reduce overgrowths and remove sharp points only — is for equine dental technicians who have passed the BEVA/BVDA examination. Even that rests on the RCVS seeing "no public interest" in prosecuting vets who work with qualified technicians, not on a change in the law; the RCVS calls it a "grey area", and the government has said it will regulate technicians when parliamentary time allows. Category 3, everything else, is for vets only.
• United States. Each state's veterinary practice act decides. Texas has licensed equine dental providers since 2011, working under a vet's general supervision on a fixed list of procedures that does not include sedation. Minnesota allows a certified floater to use hand-held, non-motorised rasps under veterinary supervision, and Oklahoma certifies non-veterinary equine dental care providers. In Washington, floating teeth is a task for veterinary technicians, and lay floaters are challenging that in court. The AAEP's position is that sedatives and anaesthetics are for licensed vets, and that technicians should work only where state law allows, under a vet's supervision.
• Australia. Each state and territory has its own act. In Queensland, filing or rasping a horse's teeth is defined as not being veterinary science, so it is open to anyone. Victoria's act mainly protects the title of veterinarian, and we found no provision there reserving rasping to vets. New South Wales and South Australia restrict some equine dental procedures by regulation; we could not load the current texts, so check with your state's veterinary board. The Australian Veterinary Association's policy is that all equine dental procedures should be done by vets — a position, not a law.

In practice: whoever comes, ask what they are qualified to do, and who will sedate the horse if the exam needs it.

What to write down at each visit

Related guides

• Horse feeding plan — what to feed when chewing gets harder, and the numbers worth knowing
• Horse weight calculator — weight loss is one of the signs; a tape tells you before the eye does
• How often should the farrier come? — the same problem with the other regular visitor: the interval you keep

Sources

• AAEP — Learn to recognize your horse's dental problems (exam intervals by age, signs, horses that adapt)
• AAEP — Introduction to equine dentistry (horses over ten)
• AAEP — Care guidelines for equine rescue and retirement facilities (yearly exams, worn teeth, feeding when chewing is impaired)
• AAEP — Position on equine dentistry (revised 2025: sedation, technicians under supervision)
• Australian Veterinary Association — A healthy set makes for a happy horse (2017) and its equine dentistry policy
• The British Horse Society — Dental checks
• Merck Veterinary Manual — Overview of general dentistry in horses (the exam, records, overgrown teeth) and Estimation of age by examination of the teeth (eruption ages, Triadan numbering)
• Wolf teeth: Tanner and colleagues, Journal of Veterinary Dentistry 2019 (306 Thoroughbred yearlings); owner survey, 2004 (854 owners); Dixon and Dacre, The Veterinary Journal 2005
• EOTRH: Equine Veterinary Journal 2018 (142 horses aged ten and over); 838 dental patients, 2023; UC Davis Center for Equine Health — The Horse Report, Fall 2023 (signs)
• Prevalence: Australian Veterinary Journal 2015 (400 heads, Queensland); BEVA Congress abstract, Equine Veterinary Journal 47 (Suppl. 48):10, 2015 (cheek-side and tongue-side points, and ulcers); Walker and colleagues, Veterinary Record 2012 (diastemata in 471 horses); Nuttall and colleagues, 2019 (932 horses)
• Colic: recurrence and dental problems, 2011; colonic obstruction and dental checks, 2002; impaction colic and dental findings, 2014
• Rasping trials: Carmalt JL, Townsend HG, Janzen ED, Cymbaluk NE — Effect of dental floating on weight gain, body condition score, feed digestibility, and fecal particle size in pregnant mares. JAVMA 225(12):1889–1893, 2004; Carmalt and Allen, JAVMA 2006; Carmalt, Journal of Veterinary Dentistry 2006 (dressage horses); Veterinary Quarterly 2017 (38 stallions); later: 2013, 2018, 2023, 2024
• UK law: Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966; RCVS supporting guidance 19; BEVA — Current regulations on equine dental procedures; BAEDT; RCVS on paraprofessionals; Defra — reform of the Veterinary Surgeons Act, government response
• US law: Texas HB 414 (2011); Minnesota Statutes §156.075; Oklahoma 59 O.S. §698.30; Washington RCW 18.92.060 and WAC 246-935-050; sedatives: 21 CFR 522.536 and 522.2662
• Australian law: Queensland Veterinary Surgeons Act 1936 and Veterinary Surgeons Regulation 2016; Victoria — Veterinary Practice Act 1997; NSW Health — Schedule 4 medicines and veterinary practice

Guidance and the law change; the rules on who may do what were checked on the date above. Set your horse's interval with your vet.

Also available in Español · Português · Nederlands · Français · Deutsch · Italiano

Next: what to record about your horse — the five categories that earn their place, and what to leave out.