A thoroughbred racehorse that once sold for £240,000 was among eleven rescued from a Co Cork farm where animals were found in an emaciated condition in stables full of manure.
War Celeste, a seven-year-old mare, was bought by the China Racing Club at a Tattersalls sale in October 2013.
She was sent to Co Tipperary to be trained by David Wachman, but never reached the race course. She was subsequently sold to a bloodstock agent in December 2015 for £15,000.
It is not known who owned the horse when she was found at a farm in Nohoval, Co Cork last year.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Maddie Doyle from the My Lovely Horse Rescue centre said they received a call from a member of the public who was concerned about the conditions which animals were being held in on the Co Cork farm.
Volunteers from the rescue organisation visited the farm with officials from the Department of Agriculture where they found the animals in an emaciated condition with no access to food.
Ms Doyle said some of the horses were roaming in a paddock with access to a covered barn, while there were a number of others locked in three different stables.
She said two of the stables were so full of manure that the doors could not be opened.
"There was two stables of particular where the level of manure pretty much came to the top of the stable door," Ms Doyle said.
"To be able to manage to get those horses out there had to be a bit of assessment done. The door had to be broken off and the manure had to be dug out in order to provide a slope or trench for them to climb down off it and onto the ground.
"They'd been locked in for so long that they were frightened to come out."
Ms Doyle said it was hard to tell how long the animals had been on the farm, but it had clearly been a lengthy period.
"If you were just to look at how underweight they were, how their feet were, the level of faeces and urine in the stables, then you'd have to assume it was a lengthy period of time.
"An animal doesn't get into that kind of condition overnight."
Five of the 11 horses were taken into the care of My Lovely Horse Rescue while the others went to another rescue centre. A donkey found at the scene was taken to the Donkey Sanctuary.
Sadly, Ms Doyle said that two of the five horses taken in by her organisation had to be euthanised as they were severely underweight.
"When a horse gets to a certain level of neglect it can be quite hard to bring them back," she said.
"On the inside there can potentially be a lot of damage caused by the starvation."
War Celeste was born in 2012 and was sired by War Front, a leading stallion based in Kentucky in the United States whose current stud fee stands at $250,000 (€222,000).
It was only the day after she was rescued, when the rescue organisation were doing her paperwork, that they realised her thoroughbred pedigree.
Ms Doyle said that a horses value is not a guarantee about their future.
"Our experience tells us that it doesn't matter how much you were worth at a certain point of time, you have the same chance of ending up neglected as a horse considered not to be so valuable."
She said the organisation are optimistic that the horse will be re-homed with an experienced thoroughbred handler "so she can live out the rest of her life and never end up in that kind of situation again."
Gardaí have said they are investigating alleged offences against animals at the farm.
The investigation is ongoing and they are following a definite line of inquiry.
