THREE sows have been gutted and 18 unborn piglets yanked out and dumped by a country lane in a crime that has horrified a Springhurst farming couple.
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The mutilations were something that Beechworth police sergeant Geoff Still said he never seen before.
“And I’ve been doing this for 40 years. It’s just a disgusting act.”
A lamb was also slaughtered and gutted by the side of Orchard Lane.
The carcasses of the lamb and sows have not been found, though the piglets and other animal waste were left strewn on either side of the dirt road.
Terry and Nicole Brown have been farming free-range pigs on their property for about seven years.
The incident was discovered when the couple were doing a routine boundary check on Sunday about 8am.
It was a job they did every morning.
“We saw there were animal intenstines, young piglets, guts on either side of the road,” Mrs Brown said.
It was obvious, she said, that at least three of their 600 pigs – about 150 are sows – had been slaughtered.
“I felt disgusted. It’s disgraceful, it’s just not right.”
Mr Brown said he would not be surprised if more and more people in the area began to install their own surveillance cameras to detect crooks.
“The worse thing about it is that even if they do get caught, the penalty usually doesn’t fit the crime,” he said.
Mr Brown said he would certainly like people to provide police with whatever information they had.
"I’m disgusted. There’s other words I could use but you can’t print them,” he said.
“I’m probably of the old school and so I know what I’d like to do to them. But you just can’t do that.”
Sgt Still said it was not known whether the pigs were targeted.
The road, he said, was used by many people.
“You could have someone coming along with their kids, they could be on a bike ride, or kids could just come across it,” he said.
"It would be pretty horrifying for them I’d imagine.”
Details to Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
