Beastly Squalor Mead Farm Animals Rescued From Deplorable Conditions
Animal control officers on Thursday rescued dozens of goats, cows, chickens and pigs from a Mead farm that looked and smelled more like a landfill than a barnyard.
They also called in social workers to check on the welfare of the elderly farmer and notified health inspectors of the squalor.
“It’s horrible,” said animal control director Nancy Sattin, who received a tip about the conditions Wednesday.
Conditions on the 10-acre parcel, owned by 81-year-old Londro “Smitty” Smith, were deplorable.
Two-foot-high piles of rotting onions, oranges and other produce covered most of the property.
Sattin guessed it was refuse left over from four decades of pig farming. Smith said Thursday he’s kept pigs on the farm on East Farwell Road since the mid-1950s.
Some hog ranchers collect old vegetables from grocery stores to feed their animals, Sattin said.
Carcasses of dead animals and broken-down trucks also were scattered throughout the property, along with hundreds of milk jugs, broken cinder blocks and other trash.
A putrid odor hung in the air despite a steady breeze that rustled pine needles overhead. Flies buzzed everywhere.
The 11 goats were living in a ramshackle pen filled nearly 3-feet-deep with manure, carcasses and garbage.
Their neglected hooves had grown into grotesque, curly horns that dug into their feet and made standing so painful, some leaned on their knees instead.
They had stayed alive by eating rotten garbage and had no water available to them, Sattin said.
“Dehydration is our main concern,” said Sattin, as she and two men loaded the goats into a stock trailer.
Smith said the goats were being cared for properly.
“I know good and well they were getting produce,” said Smith, anger showing behind the cataracts in his eyes. “And goats don’t need much water.”
The dozen pigs and four cows were bedded down in a rubbish-filled pasture. Their only source of water was a pool of fetid liquid near a mound of trash at the north end of the field.
“Those cows, they just shouldn’t have to live like that,” said Gordon Connall, a retired Kaiser Aluminum worker and veteran animal rescuer who helped Sattin on Thursday.
They took the animals to the Stockland Livestock Exchange, where they will be cleaned up and either auctioned off, given away or euthanized.
Sattin said Smith was cooperating with authorities and probably won’t face animal cruelty charges. “I think he’s just gotten in over his head, unintentionally,” she said.
Smith complained that animal control officers gave him no warning before confiscating his livestock.
“If they had given me a few days or told me what the problems were, maybe I could have fixed things up some,” he said.
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