A Mallee farmer has been jailed for six months after government officials discovered more than 700 dead sheep on his regional Victorian farm.<\/p>\n
Steven John Ralston faced the Bendigo Magistrates’ Court on Thursday on 76 charges, including aggravated cruelty to animals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) officers attended Ralston’s properties in Chinkapook, north-west of Swan Hill, in November 2022 and found 52 dead sheep.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of the surviving flock were in such poor condition that they had to be euthanased, the court was told.<\/p>\n
Officers returned more than 10 times between November 2022 and January 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ralston was issued repeat notices to provide the sheep with feed and water and to treat them for flystrike.<\/p>\n
The court was told numerous sheep were found emaciated, fly-struck and unable to stand during the searches.<\/p>\n
DEECA euthanased 1,747 sheep and found 713 sheep dead on Mr Ralston’s property during the three months.<\/p>\n
Only 120 sheep survived.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Magistrate finds cruelty by neglect<\/p>\n
The court heard Ralston had been farming since 1981, and the property was his family’s farm.<\/p>\n
He acquired a large flock in 2022, after which the region experienced a major flood, which led to difficult farming conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard Ralston had a history of neglect towards animals, including a fine in 2009 for driving into cows requiring them to be euthanased, and other neglect offences in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was disqualified from being in charge of any farm animal for 25 years and fined $65,000 in April 2023, after admitting to cruelty charges relating to more than 1,320 sheep.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In sentencing, Magistrate Trieu Huynh said Ralston had continuously declined DEECA’s offers of assistance and advice.<\/p>\n
He accepted the weather conditions played a part in the offending and that this was an act of neglect, rather than active cruelty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ralston was jailed for six months and fined $10,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Mallee farmer has been jailed for six months after government officials discovered more than 700 dead sheep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[13329,64,63,63655,99,63657,20666,1105,15158,25656,63656],"class_list":{"0":"post-84592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-animal-cruelty","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-bendigo","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-chinkapook","14":"tag-farmers","15":"tag-guilty","16":"tag-livestock","17":"tag-sheep","18":"tag-steven-ralston"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}