FOREST HILL, Md. — If you’re driving down West Jarrettsville Road and you pass the Carr family farm, you’ve been put on notice: noise, odors, and outdoor sex may be present, and it’s the sex, which appears to have landed the owners in trouble with Animal Control.
“I had a billy goat out there and he just matured and he was overheating and he was going after the ewes and the sheep basically right up here and he roughed up some ewes,” Jesse Carr explained.
Two sheep with noticeable limps that ultimately were euthanized in mid-July.
A few weeks later, authorities seized 40 additional animals, and two pigs were put down.
“We found that not only had the problem not been addressed, but it had been aggravated because there were additional animals now on the farm,” said Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, “ and then again, I’ve spoken about this, none of us are getting any younger.”
Jesse Carr is getting older by the day, but he says his age has nothing to do with how he cares for his livestock.
“There’s a sheriff or something up here. He’s crucifying me over the airlines. He’s saying animal neglect,” said Carr, “We had to put two animals down because they were old. Fragile. They were as old as the house I built here and that’s 10 years old.”
Most recently, Carr says Animal Control has required that he have veterinarians come out and check all of his livestock, but he says the vet bills alone would be ten times what the animals are worth.
It will cost him the animals, which have been seized and it may yet cost him those that remain, not because they’ve been neglected or abused, but because it’s too expensive to have every one of them screened.
“If you don’t have this done, and it’s always 24 hours, you never get more than seven days. You’re lucky to get seven days,” said Carr, “They’re robbing people. They’re literally robbing people."
