La Broquerie council heard from a distressed resident Wednesday morning regarding loose farm animals damaging her yard.

Louise Tetrault lives southeast of the community of La Broquerie. She says her neighbours have many farm animals including pigs, sheep, and miniature horses and none of them are properly fenced in or cared for. She notes they are often found damaging her yard and one pig even chased her around her own car. She adds at one point as many as 50 of the neighbours sheep were on her yard. She says this has been an ongoing issue for many years and plead with council to deal with the situation.

Reeve Lewis Weiss says the presentation to council was very informative and disturbing and they are prepared to handle the issue.

surveillance footage shows pigs on the Tetrault's lawn“I had a meeting some months ago with a landowner who was concerned that the RM was trying to remove their animals and I gave him some advice that he could be grandfathered in, now there is a lot of information coming in that these animals are out and running amok in the neighbouring areas causing damage to turf, to trees and everything else, so it will have to be dealt with ASAP."

The property in question is zoned General Use and would require a conditional use permit to have farm animals of any kind. Weiss says they do not have those permits and have proven they are not capable of taking care of the animals. The damage to the Tetrault's yard has been significant.

La Broquerie CAO Anne Burns says the owner of these animals has been highly uncooperative when the municipality has tried to resolve the issue. She says they have now started the necessary legal processes.

“The first thing we did was give them a letter, advise them they had 30 days to resolve it because they have to get a permit, we don’t have any records of permits so now the next step is we will go through an actual order where they will be served and given an opportunity to appeal to council within 14 days and then go from there. If they don’t follow through that order, then we can take legal means to make them.”

Tetrault also submitted a number of photos to La Broquerie council showing the damage done to her yard and property. Some of the property damage can be seen in the gallery below.