The Hoppynge Farm owners, who breed Boer goats on their 500 acre property outside Rylstone/Kandos, have been targeted three times in the last ten days.

“We found two kids who were dead and it looks like signs of neck wounds, which is unusual, they don’t appear to be consistent with firearms and we surmise that they have been shot with a crossbow or similar,” Mr Payne said.

“Two nights later, last Thursday, we found six kids in the paddock, all had been shot through the neck – some of them multiple times, and on Friday night we found yet another one had been shot and they trussed it up with some wire.

“We have been staking out our property all night, every night for 10 days in an effort to catch them. You feel like you're under siege."

Mr Payne has described the killings as, ‘some kind of sadistic pleasure’.

“It’s not sport because there’s no sport in killing little kids, three months old, sitting in the paddock,” he said. “In all these cases, they’ve just been shot through the neck and left.”

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The couple believes they were targeted again on Sunday night, but the trespassers were disrupted.

“All of this has been within 200 metres of the house and even though we have cameras everywhere, the people have actually come from Glen Alice Road just over the fence,” Mr Payne said.

“It’s not remote, that’s the shock.

“We’re being targeted and we believe it’s someone local, but we just don’t know who.”

The current financial loss is around $1000, but Mr Payne says the killing is the worst part.

“The thing that’s really sad is that they are senselessly killing animals for no reason, especially little defenceless animals.”

Police are now investigating.