Agriculture Victoria animal health and welfare compliance program manager Daniel Bode said the significant offending occurred over a combination of three separate incidents across numerous properties in south-west Victoria, over a period of four years, under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986.
“This outcome is welcomed by Agriculture Victoria as this level of offending was exceptionally appalling, including multiple failures to provide proper or sufficient feed to his cattle, a failure to treat seriously ill cattle and provide appropriate management care to his stock,” Mr Bode said.
The defendant was the owner and person in charge of about 1300 head of cattle on various parcels of land near Colac between 2022 and 2024.
Mr Bode said many of the cattle were in extremely poor condition and emaciated from a failure to provide sufficient and appropriate feed, resulting in many cows, and in some cases calves, either recently deceased or requiring euthanasia.
During the 28 days provided by the court for the owner to de-stock, Agriculture Victoria will monitor the process.
Post-mortems conducted indicated there was a failure to provide sufficient food, plus having heavy worm burdens, which led to the death of the cattle.
“Apart from the obvious pain and suffering of the animals, animal welfare breaches can jeopardise Victoria’s reputation as a humane and responsible producer of food, which can, in turn, affect all producers and livestock owners,” Mr Bode said.
