Animal owner Christopher Neill, 40, was jailed for six months when magistrates heard how he flouted a lifetime ban on keeping animals and went on to ill-treat ferrets, dogs and a hamster.

When RSPCA inspectors called at his home they discovered a hamster lying dead in its cage, dogs which were being kept in squalid conditions, and two ferrets kept in filthy cages filled with excrement and with no food or water.

Neill, of Callender, Ouston, Chester-le-Street, County Durham, denied six charges of causing unnecessary suffering to animals and three charges of being in breach of his disqualification order.

He was jailed for six months by magistrates at Chester-le-Street and banned from keeping animals for the rest of his life.

RSPCA inspectors found dead cattle rotting in their excrement and more than a dozen emaciated livestock when they visited Village Farm, at Faceby, near Stokesley, North Yorkshire.

One of the animals had been partially eaten by vermin at the farm, run by brother and sister William and Dorothy Tinkler.

The Tinklers, who appeared before Richmond Magistrates' Court in January last year, were banned from keeping cattle and sheep for five years.

Both pleaded guilty to 21 counts of causing unnecessary suffering to animals and asked for another 22 to be taken into consideration.