The owners of more than 40 horses, found either dead or severely malnourished at a Roane County farm, could be facing neglect charges by Wednesday morning.
Roane County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeff Smith was meeting with Roane County’s Prosecuting Attorney on Tuesday afternoon to determine what those charges could be.
“The horses weren’t being fed nearly what they needed to be to sustain as many as there were on the farm,” Deputy Smith said on Tuesday’s MetroNews Talkline.
He was one of the deputies called to a farm near Reedy late last week after a report of a dead horse and returned with a search warrant on Saturday.
In all, Deputy Smith says they found more than 20 dead horses with several others still missing.
Twenty living horses, but malnourished horses, were turned over to the care of the state’s veterinarian. Those horses are in quarantine, until further notice, because they do not have the proper shots.
“The group of horses, the size and the amount there was, they weren’t being fed nearly what they should have been to sustain that many animals,”Deputy Smith says of the discovery.
In addition to a little grain, “There was some hay there on the farm. It didn’t appear, at that time, that they had been fed hay very often.”
Donations of grain and hay for the surviving horses are being accepted.
For more information, you can call the Roane County Sheriff’s Department at 304-927-3410 or the Roane County Animal Shelter at 304-927-2555.