AN award-winning sausage-maker who left a lamb with a broken leg tangled up in brambles for days has been ordered to pay £4,000 by magistrates.

Trading standards officers found the animal with a bone sticking out of its leg on Alan Dobson's land at Suckley. Pus was oozing out of the wound.

Investigators also found dead lambs lying in a field almost bare of grass.

Dobson, who set up the Parson's Nose sausage shop in Bromyard, admitted causing unnecessary suffering to lambs when he appeared before Evesham magistrates this week.

"This is not actual cruelty but a case of omission and neglect," said Barry Berlin, prosecuting.

He said that as well as the dead sheep, others had to be put down. Mr Berlin said Dobson, aged 50, failed to inspect the animals properly and breached the new code of practice regarding sheep farming.

Dobson, of Grove Court Farm, Greenhill, near Suckley, bought the sheep from a dealer on February 20 last year.

Joe Kieran, defending, said Dobson had been told some of the lambs were "not going to make it".

"He accepts that the field was not very well covered with grass but thought it adequate for the 40-strong flock to be sustained for a week," said Mr Kieran. "He did his incompetent best to manage in very difficult circumstances."

He said Dobson had not spotted the lamb caught in brambles, saying had he seen it, he would have taken it home and properly cared for it.

"He is a decent chap without a vestige of cruelty in him and what happened was completely out of character," said Mr Kieran.

Dobson was fined £1,500 and told to pay £2,763 costs.