No less than 50 animals seized for severe neglect in Hastière, one of the last interventions of our refuge du Marais on Thursday April 11 with the shelters Le Rêve d’Aby, Animaux en Péril and Silence Animal at the request of the Unité Bien-Être Animal in Heer (Hastière).
Some 30 sheep and a dozen equines were discovered gravely neglected by their owners, after equines had left their field and wandered onto the public highway. Alerted by local residents, veterinary inspectors decided to inspect the owner’s meadows. In view of the seriousness of the findings, including dozens of decomposing sheep corpses, the animals were seized. The various associations quickly got organized and went to the site to take charge of all the animals present.
At the Veeweyde Refuge du Marais, we welcomed 2 draught mares, 5 ewes and their 6 lambs.
Rapid intervention by the authorities
On the spot, veterinary inspectors noticed some negligence: the stray ponies had long feet and dirty coats. These clues prompted them to check all the owner’s meadows and discover the worst. One field was occupied by some thirty unshorn, sickly, feral sheep.
Countless bones, skulls and decomposing sheep litter the ground. After this discovery, another meadow is inspected and a sheep is spotted with over 4 years of wool on its back!
Nearby, a decomposing sheep had not survived the mistreatment. A few hundred meters further on, a group of ponies share a field where grass is scarce and water is nowhere to be found.
The shelter is stained with droppings, the equines have no clean bedding and all wear filthy coats and untrimmed hooves. The local police also say they often have to intervene at this address, as the fences have long since failed to hold back the herd.
Rescue operation for wandering sheep
Loading, transporting and receiving so many animals at once is no easy task. Shelter teams worked alongside UBEA staff until late afternoon to achieve this feat. What’s more, capturing the sheep was very complicated.
Professional caretakers, volunteers and veterinary inspectors have had to work hard to keep these semi-wild animals under control. The sheep pasture is huge, with several hectares available to the sheep, but they are not cared for, they reproduce, and several animals lose their lives. Recently, lamb corpses have been piling up. Shelters are finding many sheep decomposing…
To reach their shelter, the cattle have to cross a 50-centimeter-deep mud puddle, making it impossible for the lambs to enter without getting permanently stuck. It is therefore out of the question to take them there to load them into the vehicles.
The fences are non-existent, and the flock quickly crossed the boundaries in full view of those involved. The sheep now roamed the gardens of the houses, the bramble thickets, the hedge paths and split into smaller groups, forcing the associations to do the same. A first group was intercepted in the garden of a house overlooking the first pasture, where the sheep were evacuated one after the other.
Further down the road, a small group had come to a standstill in a bramble thicket, and the teams had no choice but to enter the thicket to evacuate them. The last ewes are finally loaded into the associations’ vehicles, after having travelled more than a kilometer.
A sporting catch for the ponies
The group of ponies is clearly not used to the presence of humans, as a wave of panic rises at the first sight of the caretakers arriving near their field. The ponies are in good shape, but totally on their own, wandering regularly between their “meadow” and the nearby streets. Clearly, the ponies have become desocialized through lack of human contact, and approaching them is risky.
The horses’ wild behavior required a great deal of concentration on the part of the professional and volunteer carers, who nevertheless managed to extricate them one by one from the situation.
A logical and life-saving seizure
The seizure decision taken by the Animal Welfare Unit was consistent with the numerous corpses discovered on site, and with the state of health of certain animals.
Ewes lose their wool in shreds, a sign of mange infestation, and suffer from severe diarrhea, causing them to reject lambs that are unable to feed adequately.
Ponies and draught horses need to be dewormed and treated for external parasites. Their feet should also be trimmed to avoid future deformities.
All the animals have been placed in the shelters that took them in, and will be rapidly examined by vets.
Sentence and final destination
As for the final destination of the animals, the decision rests with Minister Céline Tellier, who has two months to confirm, in view of the seriousness of the facts, that the animals will be entrusted to the associations they have joined.
The UBEA has drawn up an official report for infringement of the Walloon Animal Welfare Code. The owner may face criminal or administrative proceedings. If the Public Prosecutor’s Office decides to take up the case, it may refer the owner to the criminal court. The owner could face 8 days to 3 years’ imprisonment and/or a fine of up to 1 million euros.
If the Public Prosecutor’s Office does not pursue the matter, it will be up to the sanctioning official to impose a fine of up to 100,000 euros, as well as the withdrawal of an animal-owning license.
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