RP male carabaos got toothache

Filipino ancestors had never foreseen that the water buffaloes commonly called carabaos running wildly and freely in the mountains and forests of Samar and Leyte in the 17th century will have that pesky toothache in the 21st century.

Or, perhaps, they just did not mind because no one owns the carabao that was tamed eventually for food production processes through the years. Carabaos at this age are regarded as diligent and intelligent animals and a big help to farmers who cultivate the land.

Or they did not predict that soft drinks, junk food, sugar and ice in the modern age will flood the consumer market (but this is for humans not carabaos).

“Are carabaos headed for the dental chair?” Randy Foronda asked in his article published in the SEARCA News recently. This article will get anyone asking two questions : Do carabaos have a changing eating habit that they are now prone to tooth decay? Why male carabaos got this painful toothache and not female carabaos who bear calcium-needing offspring?

Dental hygiene and brushing animal teeth is no longer new to members of the Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and other animal rights advocacy groups know that dogs and other animals usually suffer from tooth decay.

Writing from Los Baños in Laguna, Foronda says that carabaos with scientific name Bubalus bubalis, males for that matter, have a higher incidence of tooth decay in males than in females.

He quotes Dr. Rio John Ducusin of the College of Veterinary Medicine of the University of the Philippines as saying that the carabaos’ “sharp molar surfaces, dental plaque and dental fracture could lead to oral infection or diseases.”

Ducusin recommends further study to determine the “best therapy for each pathogen’s suppression” and eventually free the carabaos from tooth decay. He did not, however, explain why male carabaos , generally, have tooth decay.

Just how important is this field of study that is generally sidelined for more income-generating and money-making ventures?

Carabaos being grass-eating animals and yes, vegetarians, are raised as working animals and source of milk and meat in agricultural areas of the Philippines. Long before gasoline-fed tractors and plowing machines have been invented, carabaos have been the food-producers’ helpers.

Like human beings, the throbbing, pounding and pestering toothache could send a tamed carabao run amuck and belt out a wild agonizing moo as an expression of extreme pain. (GEM)