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A shearer received a 16-month jail term after abusing a lamb on an Oxford farm in February. The lamb died from his wounds. Photo / Archive
A shearer who twice struck a lamb because it broke its shearing comb, causing injuries that resulted in its death, has been jailed for 16 months.
Christopher John Tredinnick, 51, of Cromwell, appeared before Judge Michael Turner in Alexandra District Court yesterday to be sentenced on one charge of willful mistreatment of an animal.
Judge Turner read the summary of facts from the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI).
On February 17, Tredinnick was working as a shearing contractor on a farm in Oxford shearing lambs.
While shearing a lamb, he began to struggle and broke the comb from Tredinnick’s handpiece.
Annoyed, he turned the handpiece and hit the lamb twice in the right eye with the protruding tension knob.
This fractured the eye socket of the lamb and caused fragments of the orbital bone to enter the eye of the lamb.
Tredinnick then put the lamb back in the holding pen behind him.
Shortly after, he went into the corral, taking the handpiece, and beat the lamb again.
This resulted in a severe skull fracture with multiple fracture lines and a 3 cm diameter piece of bone dislodged from the skull.
He then removed the lamb from the holding pen, still alive but “limp and unanswered”, and placed it on the shore before pushing it down the chute where it later died from its injuries.
When he finished work, he took the lamb’s body from the bottom of the ramp and put it in his vehicle.
When asked by the farmer, he told him that the lamb had suffocated and that he would take it home to feed his dog.
On February 21, MPI animal welfare inspectors sought Tredinnick’s address and recovered the remains of the lamb that were taken for an autopsy to a veterinarian, who concluded that the lamb had died from two “separate episodes of blunt force trauma. “which resulted in the fractures.
The vet said the lamb would have been in a lot of pain and distress and the wounds caused its death.
When MPI spoke to him, Tredinnick declined a formal interview, saying the incident never happened and the allegations were “clumsy …”.
Judge Turner also read other evidence.
In February, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sent Tredinnick a letter about the physical abuse of his pet German Shepherd.
MPI prosecutor Lisa Brown had previously argued that jail was appropriate, but acknowledged that house arrest was likely.
Tredinnick “was not a man who should work with animals,” he said.
He also requested a disqualification period of not less than four years in relation to all animals.
Tredinnick’s attorney, Kieran Tohill, said his client “lost his mind,” but it was “once” and that Tredinnick had sheared hundreds of thousands of sheep in his shearing career.
He entered a house arrest sentence, but Judge Turner dismissed it because a proper address had not been provided.
Judge Turner sentenced Tredinnick to 16 months in jail with permission to request house arrest, disqualified him from owning or in charge of an animal for two years, and ordered him to pay a $ 454 repair to cover the veterinary bill.
