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Man Accused of Starving 170 Goats to Death Pleads No Contest

By Beacon Staff

GREAT FALLS – A Malta man accused of allowing about 170 goats to starve or freeze to death by locking them in a barn without food and water for more than a month last winter has been given a six-year deferred sentence and must pay $16,000 in restitution.

The Great Falls Tribune reports Jon Marc Carman appeared in District Court in Phillips County on Tuesday and pleaded no contest to felony aggravated animal cruelty.

Neighbors alerted the Montana Department of Livestock in early February 2010, and a livestock investigator discovered about 170 adult and baby goats piled on top of each other in the barn.

Judge John McKeon ordered that the restitution be paid to a woman whose 70 goats died under Carman’s care and to the landowner for damages to the barn and the cost of removing the animals.