Animals vanish without a trace

Despite flying drones, including infrared drones, along creek lines, scouring paddocks and gullies on foot, driving through hills and farmland, putting calls out on social media, talking to neighbours, locals, rangers from neighbouring shires and Vets for Compassion (who were treating livestock in the area), and police, there has been no trace of them.

“They have disappeared off the face of the earth,” Dr Coy said.

“I can’t say for sure what’s happened to them, but put it this way, I’ve now reported it to the stock theft unit.”

Dr Coy’s property was burnt on Thursday, January 8.

Her and her brothers had released stock and wildlife from pens as the flames encroached.

Of her 80 cows, 71 died in the fires.

She had to euthanise a further seven.

Just two survived, and they’re still not out of the woods.

The wildlife rescuer and carer has run the Tarcombe Animal Shelter on her 162-hectare property for decades.

Her pony operation was what funded her work.

“The horses are gone; that’s what I made my money out of, to support the shelter, training kids’ ponies,” Dr Coy said.

“They were nice, reliable, strong, healthy kids’ ponies, instead of kids being put on thoroughbreds.

“My breeders, yearlings, two-year-olds, and my two stallions, all gone, disappeared.”

The horses were Clydesdale crosses with a 40-year breeding history.

“To have them just disappear overnight, it’s bloody heartbreaking,” she said.

Dr Coy had heard reports of people setting up yards, running horses and cattle into them and loading them onto trucks, a scene not out of place during natural disasters as farmers rush to save their stock.

She said she’d been slammed on social media for waiting “too long” to post about the missing horses, but that she hadn’t initially suspected foul play.

Her cows had made it all the way to the creek, which borders the back her property, but got caught in a gully with nowhere to go.

“We thought we’d find the horses, at least some of them dead, and we’d hoped that some had survived either in the bush, in our gullies, maybe on the neighbouring properties because they’re a lot more agile,” Dr Coy said.

“Being performance ponies, they’re really fit and they’re bred to be able to spend the whole day at pony club, jumping, doing all those athletic things ... so we thought surely, if some of the cows survived, surely some of the ponies would.

“There’s not even a hoof print on the place, nothing. It’s pretty devastating.”

Dr Coy visited the recipients of one her foundation mares a couple of weeks ago and said her and two of her offspring remained alive and well.

“There are three of the bloodline still left, and I just looked at them and thought they are such magnificent ponies, so hopefully one day I might find out what’s happened to them,” she said.

“I just hope they all got good homes and didn’t suffer.”