Donkeys must grind their food properly in order to digest it well and extract all necessary nutrition from it. Their quality of life and sometimes even their actual life depend on what happens in their stomachs and teeth are key to it.
So today our donkeys Silver, Hercules, Suleiman, Pencho, Arap and Guca line up for their teeth treatment.
It is an unpleasant and stressful experience so we always use some sedation to make things easier for the patients.
Not to mention that it’s much easier to convince a lightly sedated donkey to go into a narrow contraption without much fuss.
Moving the bottom and top jaws gently left and right give us a sense of where there is resistance and where the top and bottom molars don’t have contact.
In most cases the molars become so overgrown that their surfaces don’t connect and donkeys are unable to grind their food. Observation is key – if a donkey starts losing weight, that may be the problem.
In other cases, it’s more complicated, like in Guca’s case. She is missing her bottom molars so the entire top row of molars have become much too overgrown.
We need to have a very good look around before we begin actual work.
Filing and shortening the molars is the cure. Thankfully, our vets have done it hundreds of times by now.
Last stop, checking the incisors. Suleiman is the best example for great incisors – his bite is perfect!
Unfortunately, Hercules and Arap are not doing so well. Their incisors are overgrown and so are their premolars. That's why their bite is misaligned.
We have to file them down and make them even.
Afterwards, some of our patients are dizzy and discombobulated. We understand.
Others are dizzy and hungry. We understand that too.
