Meet Maisie. One of the prettiest ponies you'll ever meet, and whose refeeding plan I got involved with following a very hard winter.

Her hindgut was in meltdown - seriously toxic (you literally couldn't stand behind her because the stench from her faeces was awful!), she was dehydrated, and there was no evidence of any fibre digestion in her droppings, which for the record were black, gnarly, solid nuggets. I've not before seen elimination of droppings quite like it; a couple of rock-solid black nuggets were ejected randomly like projectile bullets, and absolutely stank, as in proper gag-factor stink.

She was in a dreadful state, chronically shut down, purely due to absolute neglect from her former owner during the winter. Her whole gut system needed immediate attention, she was covered in mudfever up and under her belly, and she was chronically windsucking.

With agreement from her new carer, we switched her straight onto the following feedbowl:

• Agrobs' Alpengrun Mash for a couple of months - an excellent prebiotic, gut-restorative feed.
• Our VitaComplete mineral balancer to start rebalancing her chemistry.
• Spirulina to help deacidify her hindgut and mop up the mycotoxins in her GI tract.
• Our GutAminos to help repair her intestinal wall (leaky gut); our GutAminos contains L-Glutamine, essential for helping to regenerate a healthy GI tract during critical illness, trauma, intestinal disease, starvation and/or excessive loss of lean body mass.
• Ad lib hay, netted.

Sadly, she quidded most of it - cue an urgent dental. This may have also explained why Maisie appeared so undernourished - she'd probably lost most of whatever sparse rations she could find to eat during winter through quidding.

She joined our herd and our TB mare, Carmen (herd leader) immediately took her under her wing inviting her to eat next to her. And so began Maisie’s recovery to health, which she took to like a duck to water.

Into her newly fortified feedbowl, we then got her on our OptimaCARE 30-day detox programme in the morning feed, and our StressTonic in the evening feed.

A week or so later, she had a full dental where she tried her heart out and behaved beautifully. She stopped quidding immediately.

Early May and the sun finally came out, so she got a bath (which she wasn’t terribly happy about), but then started going out for daily walks around the local lanes to get her moving and to have a browse in the hedgerows, which she liked a lot!

Here's her timeline: