Thursday, December 12, 2013

Aging cattle by their teeth

Age is an important part of livestock trading as many markets have age limits. 
Age of beef cattle at slaughter is strongly related to tenderness and meat colour.
Counting the number of permanent incisor teeth is the most common method of determining 
age in cattle.
 (MSA grading uses bone ossification, which is assessed on the carcase in the meat works.
 Obviously this method cannot be used on live animals.)
Cattle, like many animals, start life with baby or milk teeth. From about two years of age 
these teeth are replaced with permanent teeth. Permanent teeth erupt in pairs starting with
 the centre pair. 
A tooth is considered to have ‘erupted’ when it has broken through the gum. 
A pair is considered to have ‘erupted’ when the first tooth of a given pair has broken through the gum.
Figure 1. This is a 6 tooth animal. There are four obvious permanent teeth and two more either side 
breaking the gum. Note that you count the permanent teeth on the lower jaw. The upper jaw has no teeth 
– only a dental pad.
The age of an animal is often referred to by the number of permanent teeth. An animal with only milk 
teeth is 
called a ‘milk tooth’, an animal with 2 permanent teeth is a ‘2 tooth’ and so on until they have a full set 
of 8 permanent teeth when they are said to be an ‘8 tooth’ or ‘full mouth’.
The range in age at teeth eruption is enormous. It varies from beast to beast due to individuality, 
breed, nutrition and climatic influences. Cattle that exhibit early sexual maturity (puberty) have teeth 
eruption at younger ages than late maturing cattle. British-bred cattle have tooth eruption at younger 
ages than Brahman cross cattle.
Table 1. A guide for estimating the age (in months) of cattle by dentition
TeethBreedAverage age (months) at eruptionRange in age at eruption (months)
2 toothBritish cattle
Brahman cross
24
26
21-27
23-29
4 toothBritish cattle
Brahman cross
31
33
26-36
28-38
6 toothBritish cattle
Brahman cross
38
41
32-44
35-47
8 toothBritish cattle
Brahman cross
46
51
39-54
43-58
From this table you can see that a beast with four permanent incisor teeth could be as young as 26 months 
or as old as 38 months.
Despite this inaccuracy, dentition (or teeth counting) is still a useful way to assess cattle age.
Below are visual representations of cattle dentition, courtesy of AUS-MEAT Limited.

0 tooth




2 tooth




4 tooth




7 tooth




8 tooth






Article Credit:http://futurebeef.com.au

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