MONROE — Chase Klemm, the Brodhead man now twice convicted of neglecting cattle, was sentenced to 30 days in jail after reaching a plea agreement July 16 in Green County Circuit Court.
Klemm, 23, is scheduled to begin his jail sentence Aug. 6. He is eligible to serve his sentence with Huber work release.
As part of his sentence, Klemm is barred from owning “any types of bovines” for five years, according to court records.
Judge James Beer also ordered Klemm to pay restitution to Green County for the care of the cattle police seized in the case. Klemm owes a total of $7,300.
Klemm was convicted after pleading no contest to one misdemeanor count each of intentionally mistreating animals and intentionally failing to provide food to an animal. As part of the plea deal, 21 related misdemeanor charges of failure to dispose of an animal carcass in a timely fashion, allowing exposure to dogs or wild animals, were dismissed.
Klemm has no criminal record in Wisconsin besides the two misdemeanor animal neglect cases.
Last August, police found Klemm’s cattle herd dying and “severely scavenged” by vultures just weeks after his conviction in a prior animal neglect case.
Weeks earlier, Klemm pleaded no contest to misdemeanor animal neglect charges related to four young calves found in January 2018 without food or shelter in below-freezing temperatures on a rural Brodhead property. Two of the calves were already dead and frozen stiff.
As part of a jointly recommended sentence in that case, he was fined but avoided jail or probation. His attorney on the case said it was “a learning experience” for her client, and Green County District Attorney Craig Nolen said he believed the fine was “an effective deterrent.”
But just a few weeks later, Green County deputies reported finding continuing evidence of animal neglect among Klemm’s livestock.
According to court documents:
On Aug. 20, the Green County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report from the Bank of Brodhead that Klemm’s herd of cattle was being neglected. Since the cattle were collateral for a loan to Klemm, bank employees had recently gone to the farm property in the Town of Decatur to inspect the animals and “were overcome by the smell of something decaying” and found four dead cows.
When he arrived at the pasture, located just north of Brodhead off County E near Condon Road, Deputy Scott Ellefson noticed vultures flying in circles overhead and found a beef cow carcass on the property that had “decayed to the point of the skeletal remains being visible.”
Ellefson found no hay or other food available to the cattle besides grass, which “was eaten down and not sufficient enough to sustain the weight needed for the animals in the pasture.” The cattle “had visible backbones, visible hip and shoulder bones, visible ribs ... and bony body outline.”
Ellefson took photos of the living animals and showed them to a vet. He noted that he did this without telling the vet to whom the cattle belonged, so as to get an “unbiased” opinion. The vet determined the cattle had deteriorated body conditions, “but the vet service and the DA’s Office both agree that the animals have not deteriorated enough to where they are in imminent danger of death,” Ellefson wrote.
About a week later, Ellefson went back to the property with Deputy Paul Weichbrod, a Humane Officer Investigator with the department since 2003. They found 34 live animals and 21 carcasses, many scavenged down to the bone.
“The smell was so overpowering that you could not be in the area for very long,” Ellefson wrote. One carcass was in a nearby creek bed, “allowing the decaying animal to pollute the creek.”
Weichbrod described the stench as “putrid” and the dead cattle as “severely scavenged.”
The herd had chewed off the roots of an uprooted tree, and trees by the creek “had their leaves completely chewed off as high as the cows could reach,” Ellefson wrote. “This is noteworthy as cattle normally do not eat leaves unless they are very hungry.”
A number of the cattle had a cough, which “would indicate that the animals have not been seen by a veterinarian recently.”
He also noted that beef cattle “under normal conditions usually do not allow you to walk around them without ‘spooking’ them and having them run away,” but these animals were not spooked and appeared to have “little to no energy to run away from us.”
A search warrant executed the same day removed the carcasses along with 12 calves, 20 cows and two bulls. Two of the seized animals subsequently died of pneumonia.