A Co Armagh couple who admitted to a series of animal cruelty offences have been jailed, banned from keeping animals and ordered to pay £46,000 in costs.
Martha Toal (50) and Michael Ferris (60), were last year given five-month sentences for what a judge described as one of the worst cruelty cases he had ever come across.
They appealed that sentence on Monday, and Judge Melody McReynolds at Armagh County Court reduced their tariffs to two months of immediate custody and upheld their lifetime ban on keeping animals.
Before the couple were led away to begin their sentences, Judge McReynolds warned them the ban included every animal, “even down to a goldfish”.
In addition, the judge ordered the pair to hand over a total £10,000 to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs and £36,000 to Armagh council after she heard the couple had refused to allow the statutory bodies to sell the seized animals despite being told that if they agreed, costs of the animals being fed, housed and cared for would be dropped.
Failing to dispose of carcasses
At an earlier hearing, Toal, from School House Close, Glenanne, was convicted of charges including failing to dispose of equine carcasses, causing unnecessary suffering, failure to provide a wholesome diet, failing to provide appropriate care for animals that appeared ill and failing to produce medicine records when required to do so.
Ferris, whose farm on Shillinghill Road, Mowhan in Armagh was where the investigation centred, was convicted of failing to dispose of equine carcasses, causing unnecessary suffering, failure to provide a wholesome diet and failing to comply with welfare improvement notices.
They also pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to seven horses and a foal and failing to take steps to ensure they had a suitable diet, a suitable environment and were free from “pain, suffering injury and disease”.
The court heard how department inspectors received an anonymous tip-off about the condition of the animals on the farm in January 2015.
They discovered horses that had no proper dry bedding in stables which were in close proximity to two horse carcasses. The carcasses had been lying for so long they were beginning to liquefy, the court heard.
Further inspections
Served with an improvement notice, inspectors gave advice to Ferris and Toal about caring for animals and what improvements were necessary, promising to return for further inspections.
The court heard testimony from vets and department inspectors that when they later returned to the farm they found no animal feed, bags of unidentified animal bones, a horse so starved it was trying to eat manure, water tubs in the field empty of water but containing broken glass and barbed wire, an emaciated red-and-white Hertfordshire cow and evidence that livestock had stripped bark from trees in the absence of grass or edible vegetation.
Ferris and Toal gave evidence during their trial, claiming they had tried to get a vet to come to the farm but had been unable to get one.
Defence barrister Kevin Magill submitted the offences “should be viewed in isolation” and that it was a case of neglect and lacking in care rather than deliberate cruelty.