Wear of sheep’s teeth

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Abstract
Pasture juices from two farms, one where rate of wear of incisor teeth of sheep was high, and one where it was low, were compared for attack on radioactive dentine. Pairs of sheep incisor teeth from “two- tooth” ewes were prepared with exposed dentine surfaces, and neutron- activated to produce P32. One of each pair of teeth was spun for 60 minutes in juice pressed from pasture from the high-wear farm, the other tooth in juice from pasture from the low-wear farm. The rate at which P32 activity appeared in the juices was measured. The same teeth were spun in citrate buffer (pH 6.1), and P32 similarly measured. It was found that the amounts of phosphorus removed by the two pasture juices were not significantly different, and were relatively small compared with the phosphorus removed by the citrate buffer, which removed about eight times as much. These results suggest that the chemical components of pasture juices are unlikely to account for the large differences of incisor tooth wear which occur on the farms.

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