Quidding is the first sign in a Merino
A Merino with a sore mouth advertises it in the pen before she advertises it on her body. The earliest sign is quidding: forage chewed a few times and dropped as neat, soggy balls that you find along the trough line and in the bedding. At the trough she eats slowly, works one side of her jaw, or pauses mid-mouthful as if reconsidering. Sheep are flock feeders who like to keep pace with their neighbours, so a Merino who lags at the trough, gets shouldered aside because she is slow, or keeps eating long after the others have drifted away is standing out for a reason. Dropped cud during rest is the same message in quieter form: the mouth could not manage a job it performs hundreds of times a day.
What your hands find before your eyes do
Run both hands along the Merino's jaw each time she is yarded. Early dental trouble can feel like a firm bulge on one side of the jawbone, a slight heat difference, or a sheep who flinches and pulls her head away when one side is pressed while tolerating the other. Strings of drool, a wet chin, and breath that has turned sour in a sheep whose breath was sweet point to feed packing around a damaged tooth. The Merino complication is her wool, so condition must be scored by hand. Feel over the spine and the short ribs through the fleece and grade what your fingers find, not what the wool suggests, because a sheep can look magnificent and feel skeletal in the same moment.
Checking a Merino's front teeth at handling
Sheep have lower front teeth meeting an upper dental pad, and those incisors are the part you can judge safely in the yards. Tip the Merino's head, part the lips, and look: the incisors should be even, firmly seated, and meeting the pad squarely. Teeth that are loose, broken, unevenly worn, missing, or spreading apart with age all reduce her ability to crop pasture short, which matters for a breed expected to graze close. Red, swollen or receding gums around any tooth are worth noting. The grinding molars at the back cannot be assessed properly without restraint and equipment, and sharp points or a lost molar usually declare themselves through quidding and jaw signs instead. A handling-day check that finds front-tooth wear in a sheep who is also dropping cud is a vet conversation, not a wait-and-see.
Feeding a Merino whose mouth is under suspicion
While the vet visit is arranged, reduce the work her mouth must do. Chaff and shorter-cut forage are kinder than long-stemmed hay that demands prolonged grinding, and a soft, palatable ration keeps condition on a sheep who is eating slowly. Feed her where competition is low; a slow eater in a flock trough loses twice, once to her teeth and once to her pen mates. Do not attempt any tooth work in the yards yourself; sheep jaws are strong, the mouth is small, and amateur interference turns an early problem into an injury.
When a Merino's teeth need the vet promptly
Book the vet soon if quidding appears at most feeds, if one-sided chewing persists, if you feel a jaw swelling, if the front teeth are loose or broken, or if hands-on condition scoring shows she is slipping under the fleece. A Merino who stops eating, stops ruminating, isolates herself from the flock, or has a hot and growing jaw swelling should be seen the same day. Filing those dated mouth checks, condition scores and vet findings in KinsLe's Pet Passport gives the flock's whole history a single home the vet can read at a glance.