Three hours in court, three witnesses and no verdict yet for a Dallas County man accused of dumping dead cows off a county bridge.

Dallas County District Court Judge Nathaniel Walker began proceedings on Wednesday in a case against &uot;Lad&uot; Brown, 53, who is charged with 13 counts of cruelty to animals and one count of criminal littering.

The charges against Brown stem from his Jan. 9 arrest for allegedly dumping his cows off a bridge on Kings Bend Road.

On Wednesday Walker heard from three witnesses – all veterinary professionals. Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Parke Keith called the first witness, Leland Nuehring, to the stand at about 2:30 p.m.

Defense attorney Julian McPhillips objected to Nuehring’s credentials, but Walker chose to hear from him. Nuehring works for the state’s veterinary diagnostic laboratory. His duties include performing post mortem procedures on animals.

Keith established during testimony that Nuehring performed post mortems on two cows found dead at the field Brown kept his cows. &uot;They were thin,&uot; Nuehring said. &uot;Very thin. It appears they had insufficient caloric intake.&uot;

George Henry D’Andrea, a diagnostic specialist with the state’s Department of Agriculture, corroborated Neuhring’s testimony. D’Andrea became involved in the case because Neuhring requested toxicology tests on the cows. When questioned about the possibility of poisoning, D’Andrea said he knew arsenic couldn’t have been used. &uot;It could be insecticide exposure, but no clinical tests indicated that,&uot; D’Andrea said. &uot;If they were poisoned by insecticide, they’d be dead in one to two hours.&uot;

McPhillips objected to testimony from Nuehring and D’Andrea several times because they examined cows found in Brown’s field and not cows found in the creek beneath the bridge. McPhillips also pointed out that Nuehring and D’Andrea didn’t examine the cows in Dallas County, but instead in a laboratory in Auburn. Walker, however, said he would hear from both men and consider the &uot;weight&uot; of their testimony.

The prosecution’s third witness, Dr. Mike Grant with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, did examine the cows at Brown’s field. &uot;They were in a pile,&uot; Grant said. &uot;I couldn’t tell anything from them, except that they were dead and decomposing. They were dead, skinny cows. I saw no clinical evidence of anything other than malnutrition.&uot;

Grant called the situation he found at Brown’s field &uot;PPM,&uot; or &uot;poor personal management.&uot; Grant added, &uot;There was no evidence of poisoning. They were uniformly thin, going down or already down. There were two dead in the field.&uot;

Brown’s trial is scheduled to continue at 2 p.m. on March 24.