Rancher Faces Charge in Dumping of 83 Dead Sheep : Livestock: The animals died from gorging on a field of green alfalfa. Their carcasses were left piled in a remote area near Lancaster.

If there’s one thing about sheep, as Antelope Valley rancher Michel Ansolabehere can attest, they love green alfalfa--love it so much that 83 of his flock gorged themselves to death and ate the rancher right into a criminal case.

The district attorney’s office filed a misdemeanor charge Wednesday against Ansolabehere because one of his herders, panicked at the loss, allegedly piled the dead sheep into a trailer and illegally dumped their bloated carcasses into a roadside ditch in a remote area west of Lancaster.

Ansolabehere, 54, one of a dwindling number of French Basque sheep ranchers in the region, said he was out of town at the time and was unaware that his herder, Arturo Henriquez, had dumped the carcasses. Henriquez was not charged. The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control said Ansolabehere, as the owner, is responsible.

The bizarre episode began when some of the rancher’s nearly 2,000 sheep pushed down a wire fence and got loose in a field of green alfalfa. “They just go wild. They love to eat that green alfalfa,” the rancher’s wife, Marie, said.

“The funny thing is they don’t know when to stop.”

Technically, the animals died from a malady called bloat--a gas buildup from the alfalfa that causes their stomachs to “literally explode,” said Dr. Patrick Ryan, a veterinarian with the county health department.

County animal control officers found the dead sheep March 6 after a complaint from a nearby property owner. The sheep had been heaped into a pile near 125th Street West and Avenue B-8, about two miles from where they had been grazing, animal control Sgt. Rick Pokorny said.

The sheep bore green ear tags, which other sheep ranchers in the area told investigators indicated they belonged to Ansolabehere.

Because of the number of sheep dumped, and in an attempt to warn other herders, the animal control department sought charges under a law that makes it illegal to dump animal carcasses within 100 feet of a road.

The decaying carcasses remained on the ground for at least five days in the remote farming area. County officials decided initially not to move them, fearing they had died of anthrax, an extremely contagious and fatal livestock disease.

But when tests on two carcasses by county veterinarians established that the animals had eaten themselves to death, Ansolabehere, at the county’s direction, picked up the carcasses and buried them March 11 in a nearby area of Kern County. Pokorny said the burial required a trench 20 feet long, four feet wide and six feet deep to accommodate all the carcasses.

Pokorny and Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Payne, who filed the case in Antelope Municipal Court in Lancaster, said they are seeking only a fine, not trying to put Ansolabehere in jail. Payne said he filed the charge against Ansolabehere, not Henriquez, because it was requested by animal control officials.

Pokorny said he believes Ansolabehere knew about the dumping, although the rancher denies it. But Ansolabehere and his wife argue that he should not have been charged because they cooperated fully with the county.

“It was an accident,” Ansolabehere said.