I've seen maggots used to treat hoof ailments before. Last summer while working on the farm we had two cases, a yearling and a mare that required sterile maggots to treat their respective ailments. It all sounds weird, but they are truly little miracle workers.
Much to the vet's delight, the first round of maggots took to the affected area just fine and started their work. Maggots are tricky, they don't like water, they don't like fresh blood, but they'll fight the infection like crazy. Each round of maggots required a bandage change approximately every two days. For the whole first round of maggots, the vet was happy with the maggots, but concerned that the filly wasn't putting much weight on the foot. She was certainly thinking about it, touching her toe to the ground before hopping on her good foot.
After about seven days, the maggots have lived their life span in the wound. The vet explained to us one day that their mouth pieces physically adapt so that they can no longer eat and they then work their way out of the injury to burrow into the ground and hopefully become flies. So he never has to worry about leaving any maggots in the wound. True to form, at seven days she had no maggots in her foot and it was time for round two.
Round two saw similar progress. The maggots took and she continued to bear more weight on the foot. At one point the vet took x-rays to see how far up the wound the maggots were going, and was pleased to see they were working their way all the way up the hoof wall where he removed the laminae.
When he came for round three, we finally got the chance to ask him if the filly could be hand grazed. He said of course, in fact, as long as it was dry and she stayed relatively quiet, she could go out in a round pen all day for all he cared. Well, we don't have a round pen, but a small triangular catch pen. He said that would work too, the important thing was that the foot stay dry.
So the next day we gave it a shot. I don't trust the filly. My friend was gung-ho about just letting her loose in the catch pen. I've known her a long time, so I kept her on a lead rope for awhile. She dug into the grass and dirt, happy to be outside (for something other than the vet) for the first time in around three weeks. Since she was quiet, after about 10 minutes, I let her off the lead rope and hopped up on the fence. My friend suggest that we go throw up her stall so that the mats got a little time to dry (we'd nicknamed the filly "waterfalls" by this point). Leaving her in the catch pen, three feet outside the gate, we turned to look at her.
She'd walked herself into a corner and got herself stuck, this made her mad. She kicked the fence with her hind foot, then somehow managed to wheel herself around and attempted to run to the other corner. Here she got mad again and thought about rearing. By this time I was in the catch pen again. She tried to bolt to her original corner, but I blocked her way, so she ran to the third corner. Here, my friend was thankfully able to grab her by the halter, because otherwise I would have had an interesting time catching her, considering all I could see was her hind end, and I now knew she felt well enough to kick with that. She spent the rest of her time outside that day grazing with me on the end of the shank.
The best part of the third round of maggots was that she was finally putting weight evenly on the hoof, including the heel. She was still walking funny, but that was because the vet had placed her in a special shoe that elevated the heel to prevent her coffin bone from rotating. The vet was essentially treating her as a foundered horse. Day five of round three of the maggots rolled around. The initial call from the vet was him calling to ask if he or my friend was changing the bandage that day. I told him I was unsure, to check with my friend. In the end, the vet changed it. I got a call later that afternoon, all of the maggots had worked their way out of the wound, she was walking well, applying full weight to the foot, and as the vet said "she's not out of the woods yet," but he was pleased. X-rays would be taken Wednesday, and we'd go from there.
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