Twenty-six farm Animals have been rescued from what’s being described as “horrible conditions” from a filthy and cluttered property in a rural Northern California community.
The SPCA for Monterey County says its crews rescued 15 rabbits, four sheep, three lambs, three goats, and one chicken from the property in Pajaro, a Monterey County farming town about 100 miles south of San Francisco. A severely emaciated lamb died after being rescued, while the goats taken from the property are being treated for emaciation and the chicken is being treated for severe mites.
Gruesome conditions included dead animals in a well
SPCA crews went to the property after the society received a tip that the animals were being confined to pens in their own feces and urine and that there were dead animals at the bottom of a well. The tipster also said that animals were being slaughtered on the property, with their meat being sold.
Rabbits, goats kept in cages piled high with feces
When SPCA rescue crews arrived they found rabbits being kept in small cages with several inches of feces piled up, while a goat pen had feces piled so high around it that the door to the pen was sealed shut.
“The sheep pen was so saturated in feces and urine that when it rains, the excrement washes down the hillside into a fire pit where the owner cooks the animals,” the SPCA said in a statement detailing the horrific conditions.
“The pit was filled with wastewater and had a dead baby goat floating in it,” the statement said.
“It’s always awful to see any animal treated like this and sadly we see it far too often in Monterey County,” Beth Brookhouser, a spokeswoman for the SPCA, told The Mercury News. “Our officers respond to over 900 cases every year just here in Monterey County.”
Dead lamb, rats found on the cluttered property
The SPCA says a dead lamb was also found on the property, which was cluttered with junk, scrap metal, old cars, rotten food, rats and freezers splattered with old blood and moldy food.
The Monterey County Health Department is also involved in the matter.
The person who owns the property and was keeping the poor animals confined in such horrid conditions is being described as a longtime resident, but the person’s name has not yet been released. The SPCA has turned the details of its rescue over to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office, with the landowner facing the prospect of being charged with a number of Animal cruelty counts.
