A dead pony dumped in a country lane was so heavily covered in mud that it looked like a huge lump of earth.

The horrific discovery was made this morning by new mum Emma Oliver, 32, owner of the Bakehouse Coffee Shop in Biddenden, as she drove along Rosemary Lane in Smarden on her way to work, with her five-week old baby boy Brody in the car.

It comes just days after the RSPCA issued a warning about a huge spike in the number of dead and dying horses found dumped in the county.

Warning: graphic image

She said: “The grass verges along the road are heavily churned up, especially in wet weather and at first I thought that a section of earth had been disturbed.

“But after stopping I saw the lump was a dead pony that was so covered in mud that you couldn’t even tell what colour it was.”

The animal lover who owns the coffee shop with her partner Benn Jarvis said it looked like the pony had been dumped out of the back of a vehicle and left there to rot.

She added: “People who treat animals in this way should never be allowed to keep them. The pony’s head was even left sticking out onto the road, it was just so upsetting to see.”

Fredericka Durham, who cares for horses at The Retreat Animal Rescue Centre in High Halden said: “Words fail me about how this pony has been treated. I got a call at 8.15 this morning from Emma who was sobbing down the phone about the pony.

“It’s such a cruel and callous thing to happen to an innocent being. It looks like a Shetland pony but it is in such a state you can’t even be sure of that.”

She added: “It’s very worrying that we are getting more calls than ever about mistreated and abandoned horses.”

This is not the first abandoned dead horse to be discovered in the borough in recent weeks.

The corpse of a small horse was removed from a field in south Ashford on Tuesday after it had been laying there for more than a month.