Graeme Rex Hodge, 69, pleaded guilty to 24 animal cruelty charges, including a number of aggravated cruelty that led to the death and serious illness of cattle in his care. The offending occurred between May 2019 and March 2020, with the charges laid by Agriculture Victoria in May 2020.

The Ballarat Magistrates' Court had heard Hodge, a farmer of 40 years from Miners Rest, owned hundreds of mixed cattle on eight properties in the Shire of Buloke.

Inspectors first attended one of the properties in May 2019, finding most of the cattle to be severely malnourished and weak, while a young cow was found deceased in an upturned feed trough.

During one subsequent visit inspectors found two carcasses at the dam bank on another of Hodge's properties, and during another they found 139 emaciated and underweight adult pregnant and lactating cows in the same paddock as steers and bulls.

That day officers also found a dead black angus cow with a missing eye and a faeces pile at her rear. Deep paddle marks on her legs indicated she had been "recumbent for a prolonged period prior to her death", while she had a parasitic infection near her udder. She was found to have suffered from starvation and dehydration and was carrying a full-term foetus.

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During subsequent visits inspectors found more deceased animals, including cows that had died during calving. While more feed was present as time went on, many of the animals remained underweight and in poor conditions.

The court heard the cattle were largely "not segregated by type, sex or class which resulted in there being many pregnant cows and calves" and that due to inadequate pasture, the animals were solely reliant on supplementary feed.

Yet they were fed poor quality hay, which was insufficient to maintain or improve their body condition. Several were euthanised due to a lack of veterinary treatment.

On one occasion inspectors and police attempted to leave the property after an inspection only to find the entrance gate locked with a "heavy duty chain". The court had heard Hodge was aggressive and refused to unlock it, forcing police to use a wire cutter to cut the fence.

Hodge had previously fronted court in St Arnaud in 2018 for similar offending, with a conditional Control Order ultimately imposed for five years, meaning a veterinarian would regularly assess his cattle and report their condition back to the department.

Hodge fronted the court again on Thursday, where he was sentenced by Magistrate Hugh Radford. On the basis of his guilty plea and the remorse it indicated, he fined him $60,000, ordered he not own farm animals for 10 years and placed him on a community corrections order for two years.

"This shows such behaviour, the abject lack of care, is something the courts won't accept," Mr Radford said.