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| Five guilty of neglecting horses | |
| (30 minutes later) | |
| Five people have been found guilty of neglecting more than 100 horses, ponies and donkeys on a Buckinghamshire farm. | |
| Horse trader James Gray, 45, and his son James Gray Junior, 16, were found guilty of 11 charges under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. | |
| His wife Julie Gray, 41, and daughters Jodie, 26, and Cordelia, 20, were each found guilty of two charges. | |
| Bicester Magistrates' Court heard RSPCA staff and vets removed 125 animals from Spindle Farm in Amersham last January. | |
| One dead horse was found on the back of a trailer with ropes around its tail, the court heard. | One dead horse was found on the back of a trailer with ropes around its tail, the court heard. |
| The court heard many horses living at the farm were found surrounded by rotting corpses of other animals which had been left to die of starvation. | |
| There were dead horses on the ground in front of me, and to the right... it was like walking into another world Nick White, World Horse Welfare | |
| RSPCA chief inspector Rob Skinner said he found 32 carcasses in different locations on the farm when he went to look round in January last year. | |
| Some of these were burnt and dumped on a bonfire while others were left lying on the ground, covered in rubbish, the court heard. | |
| Nick White, a field officer for international horse charity World Horse Welfare, was one of the first at the scene. | |
| He said: "After seeing the conditions in the fields, it wasn't until I went into the yard that the enormity of it hit me. | |
| "There were dead horses on the ground in front of me, and to the right. | |
| "I looked across there was a dead horse in the stalls. It was like walking into another world. | |
| "There were none of the normal noises I associate with a stable yard - horses moving about, eating, drinking, calling out to one another or the gentle noises that horses make when approached, expecting to be fed or cared for. They were totally silent." | |
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| Horses from Spindles Farm in Amersham. Video from World Horse Welfare. |