A dead horse has been left to rot in a field in Horton Kirby for nearly a week.

The black and white piebald horse was first spotted in a field off Mussenden Lane on December 30.

It is still thought to be lying there now, more than six days after a passerby first noticed it.

The horse owner, who did not want to be named, told News Shopper: "I was thinking it shouldn’t be lying down like that without other horses around to protect it.

"Then I passed by again and noticed its stomach was huge, which is a sure sign that it was dead.

"I’m disgusted because there is no way the owners wouldn’t have known there was a pony lying there."

The incident is not the first time horses have been mistreated in villages around Swanley in the last 18 months.

In July last year The RSPCA removed around 30 horses from Oakview Stud Farm in Horton Kirby after its owner William Cook pleaded guilty to 18 charges relating to the cruel treatment of the animals.

In March Charlotte Watson was left "disgusted" after a dead foal was dumped outside her home in Maplescombe Lane, Farningham.

And in June 2013 Hazel Evans, of Willow Road, Dartford, made the gruesome discovery of a dead foal wrapped up in a plastic bag and abandoned in a ditch in Crockenhill Lane, Swanley.