Checklist 

Get a vet or qualified equine dentist, who has been referred by a vet, to check your horse's teeth at least once a year.

With horses aged 16 plus increase the checks to twice a year.

Once a tooth is lost the corresponding tooth on the opposite jaw must be rasped regularly.

Horses teeth wear down with age. Wear must be kept even with regular rasping to ensure efficient feeding.

Carry out regular checks for tartar, abscesses and gum disease.

A healthy diet for your horse will help keep his teeth strong.

Just how old is that horse? If you think the truth can always be found in his mouth, you may have swallowed an old horse-trader's line.

How can you tell if that horse you're examining is in his prime or over the hill? You could try pinching his skin, as Arab horsemen did. You could feel his jawbone, judge the distance between his ribs or look for a hollow above each eye. The horses body reveals its age in many ways: An older horse's skin is less pliable and "drier" than that of a younger horse, his jawbone is thinner and sharper, his ribs are spaced farther apart and his eyes sit deeper in their sockets. But none of these "tests" offers anything approaching the reliability of the one you're most likely to use: aging a horse by the appearance of his front teeth. Still, that doesn't mean that teeth are always truthful!!
The method itself is ancient. Chinese drawings from as early as 700 BC show men looking in horses' mouths to determine the animals' ages. We still makes reference to the custom: Everyone knows it's impolite to "look a gift horse in the mouth." Several British publications in the 19th century, including one as early as 1818, dealt with the subject of aging horses by their teeth. But it wasn't until Sydney Galvayne traveled throughout Europe in the 1880’s, making a living by aging horses at sales and selling his secret to others, that the practice gained wide currency. He claimed that he could tell the exact age of any horse brought to him. His book, Horse Dentition: Showing How to Tell Exactly the Age of a Horse up to Thirty Years, published in Glasgow around 1885, cites his numerous triumphs in the face of public skepticism.Galvayne’s confident claim of infallibility for his method caused considerable anxiety among crooked horse dealers. These shady characters soon developed fraudulent means for outwitting buyers who had read Galvayne's book. One such deception, called "bishoping" (after a well-known practitioner of the art), involved drilling new cups in aged incisors, then burning or dying them to resemble the dark cups found in more youthful mouths. At the other extreme, a too-young horse might have his baby teeth pulled to make him look six months older. to a year

Galvayne’s name is still associated with a telltale groove that appears on older horses' teeth. Illustrations of age-related changes in equine incisors based on Galvayne's system continue to appear in veterinary and horse-care texts. Only recently has research revealed that this technique--like any other long-held belief--has its exceptions and limitations.

Within the past four years, studies of age-related dental changes carried out in Britain and Belgium have confirmed what many suspected: Teeth do lie about age. One study demonstrated that even professionals who frequently examine horses' mouths can make honest mistakes in judging age based on the shape, coloration and configuration of the upper and lower incisors. In some cases, the experts were off by as much as seven or eight years. Other studies linked exceptions to the usual rules of dentition with breed and individual variations, or with diet and management practices. It remains the case that only registration papers recording the actual date of birth provide an accurate evidence of a horse's age.