Farmers in the Shubenacadie area of Nova Scotia are upset after discovering some of their valuable livestock stolen.

One producer found the remains of a missing pig slaughtered and left to rot Tuesday by a pond on his property.

“It was a carcass. Somebody had butchered it onto this piece of plastic, and there was still fresh blood and maggots on the plastic when I pulled it out,” says Melvin Burns, owner of Moo Nay farms.

Burns was making the rounds of his farm earlier this week, when he heard a strange buzzing noise. He discovered flies around the carcass of a sow that had been missing for three weeks.

“The head was obviously very decomposed,but I could obviously make out the head of the pig and the pig skin. It just wasn't a natural occurrence,” says Burns.

Along with the pigs, Burns is also missing a litter of eight piglets and 40 chickens.

In order to access the part of the field the animals were stolen from, a person would have to come through the front yard which scares the owners.

“It's scary for me. I do a lot of my chores at night, and I’ve been wondering lately if maybe I should have my dogs with me when I’m doing my chores,” says other owner, Bianca Massarella.

“What if I run into somebody that's here?  If they're willing to kill my pig on the property, I don't know what they would do to me,” says Massarella.

After Melvin Burns posted about the incident on his Facebook page, another local farmer decided to do a count of her chickens. She found 33 chickens have gone missing.

“That’s a big hit for our farm. We don’t have the money to make up for that. It makes you feel unsafe that someone would come onto your property and just take from you like that,” says Snowy Hill Farm owner Amy Hill.

The missing chickens have cost Hill roughly $900 in profit. Moo Nay farms is out close to $5,000.

RCMP are investigating, but can’t say at this time whether the incidents are connected.

“To have someone who is going into somebody's property and taking these animals and killing them, it's quite disturbing,” says Cpl. Dal Hutchinson with Halifax RCMP.

RCMP say it’s unlikely that either farm will see a return of the animals or the money.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Emily Baron Cadloff