It started with a phone call from Gene Jeffers.

“Made me sick to my stomach to be honest with you. It’s disgusting,” Jeffers said.

He told Channel 2 that he was out fishing on a private lake in rural west Forsyth County when he made the gruesome discovery.

“I smelled all this odor and you could see the carcasses from the lake there,” he said. When deputies arrived at the farm with a search warrant, they found three dead horses, a dead cow and a 2-year-old horse, locked in a barn slowly starving.

Lt. David Waters said the carcasses had been there for several weeks.

“Probably the worst I’ve ever seen in my career,” he said.

When Channel 2’s Erin Coleman went by the farm, no one was there. But she saw other, healthy horses right out front.

Deputies charged Roque Hernandez with one count animal cruelty and four counts of not disposing dead animals. The 37-year-old has since bonded out of jail.

The starving horse was taken to an area vet and is now recovering at another farm.

Caretakers have named him Woody. He’s already gained 50 pounds but still needs to put on about 500 more. Woody is expected to make a full recovery.