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Warning: This story contains graphic images

Three people have been convicted of animal cruelty in one of the worst cases of neglect the RSPCA has ever seen.

Inspectors said the scenes they discovered at a farm on the edge of Bristol will ‘stick in the minds’ of all the inspectors who found piles of dead bodies littering the farmyard, surviving animals near death and pigs eating the carcasses.

The animals that were still alive at Ingst Manor Farm were waist deep in faeces and dead bodies.

The inspectors had to undertake a disposal operation of animal carcasses on a scale not seen since the Foot and Mouth crisis 17 years ago.

(Image: RSPCA)

The carcasses of a total of 87 dead sheep were found, nine cattle, two pigs, two goats and there were so many dead chickens and poultry that the RSPCA could not count them all.

A decomposing horse was found wrapped in plastic, with another dead horse discovered attached to the rear of a vehicle with a rope tied around its neck.

(Image: RSPCA)

Officers saw thin horses walking through thick, deep mud that was up to their knees in some places, surrounded by scrap metal, barbed wire, broken fencing and a bonfire containing animal bones.

Further horror awaited the inspectors in a muddy barn. It was filled with sick and starving sheep, cows and pigs, who were all trying to survive living on top of the piles of dead animals.

(Image: RSPCA)

Lambs and calves were standing next to the bodies of their dead mothers.

The RSPCA first began visiting the farm in March 2015, and they soon called in vets and the police to deal with what they discovered - hundreds of dead animals littering the farm.

(Image: RSPCA)

There were piles of carcasses throughout the barn amongst the live sheep and dogs kept in small, faeces-filled cages without food or water. They carried out numerous initial visits throughout that summer of 2015 to clear the dead animals and rescue the survivors.

When they returned in April 2016 to check up, they discovered instead of things getting better over the winter, they had got worse.

They found a number of pigs eating a dead sheep, with other pigs in a pig pen eating a dead pig.

(Image: RSPCA)

(Image: RSPCA)

Three people who ran the farm have now been convicted of a long list of animal cruelty charges.

They will be sentenced next week.

The woman who lived at the farm in Olveston, near Bristol, was Susan Smith, 60. She was found guilty of a total of 36 individual charges. She was convicted of ten separate charges relating to not disposing of the bodies of dead animals properly, and another 26 ranging from animal cruelty and neglect through to not registering births or using unlicensed feed.

Mark Downs, 50, from Blands Row in nearby Pilning, was convicted of 22 separate charges relating to animal cruelty, neglect and failure to dispose of bodies.

Both Smith and Downs will be sentenced next week.

(Image: RSPCA)

Georgina Blizzard-Smith, 21, who used to live at Ingst Manor Farm in Olveston, was found guilty of two offences relating to two dogs at the farm in April 2016. She has already been sentenced by magistrates, who deprived her of ownership and ordered her to pay £500 in costs and £306 in compensation.

In mitigation, the court heard that Smith claimed to have been bed-bound with pneumonia for a number of weeks in February 2015 and had left the farm in the care of Downs who was said to be struggling in difficult conditions.

“The conditions at the farm were appalling,” said RSPCA inspector Miranda Albinson.

(Image: RSPCA)

“What we were confronted with will stick in the minds of all those who helped rescue those animals.

“It was heartbreaking to see so many animals struggling for survival,” she added.

Smith and Downs will return to Bristol Magistrates’ Court for sentencing on June 21.