Jennifer Rees chews the cud over the idea of ovine dentures False teeth for sheep?
I did think neighbour Bill was joking when he told me abut ‘boffins’ giving dentures to sheep. However, after a moment’s thought I realised – that’s a neat answer to an expensive problem.
Lowland ewes, especially those over-wintered on root crops, seem prone to losing their teeth at about three or four years of age. Such a ewe is in her prime, so a flock of 200 ewes (at £70/head)* is a big investment. It’s appalling to have to slaughter a strong four-year-old ‘broken mouthed’ ewe who is losing weight simply because she can’t forage properly. The front teeth wear away because the animal grazes almost incessantly throughout the daylight hours. Giving her new teeth seems so obvious that, as with all apparently simple solutions, you wonder why no-one thought of it before?
The idea originally came to an Edinburgh dentist called Adam Thompson. Many of his patients were farmers who often talked of having to put down good sheep because of teeth problems. Then the Ministry of Agriculture’s experimental husbandry farm at Rosemaund did a trial. They fitted a group of sixty Welsh half-bred ewes with a metal splint over their natural teeth and then covered this with a plastic cement. It cost £6 per head. The Ministry are saying, rather cautiously, that it will be several years before they can assess results.
Meanwhile, here on the uplands, our Radnor and Cluns are often losing their last tooth at about five years of age and deteriorate in condition for a few weeks. Their gums then become rock hard, they start eating again and subsequently carry on producing twins until they are ten years old. You still have to handle them with care though – like the man said about his pet duck ‘No. She won’t bite – but she’ll give you one heck of a suck.’
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