Mankelow gave no explanation as to why he fed five live kittens to his pet pit bull terrier, Pipi.

He hid from the media outside court, but there was no escaping the ONE News camera inside the courtroom.

"The defendant's dog attacked the kittens one by one, biting them and breaking their bones. At least one kitten was obliterated. When the kittens struggled away, the defendant picked them up and threw them back to his dog," prosecutor Vicki Thorpe told the court.

The SPCA says Mankelow was at a party at a house when his pit bull terrier smelt something in a box in a car parked in the driveway. When he looked he discovered kittens.

He then took them to a tree behind the house, gave them to his dog and encouraged it to eat them.

The vicious attack was videoed, but the SPCA is not releasing the gruesome footage until sentencing.

Mankelow's sister, Vonita Mankelow, says her brother was just being "silly".

"He has definitely learnt his lesson of how serious the offence is that he done. But I don't think he should go to jail. It's just a silly thing he did that has really got out of control," she says.

The SPCA claims Te Ahu Mankelow had trained his pit bull terrier to kill. They have been forced to put it down because it was considered too dangerous.

Mankelow will be sentenced next month. Wilful ill treatment of an animal carries a maximum jail term of three years.

In another case, in the Pukekohe District Court, Judge Sharon McAuslan jailed David Hamuera Snook for two years and four months for tearing the head off a kitten in front of his former partner and children.

He was also banned from owning or exercising animals for five years and Judge McAusland described the killing as "callous, brutal and cruel".

A Gisborne man who fed five live kittens to his dog has been jailed for seven months.

Te Ahu Aaron Mankelow, 31, was sentenced in Gisborne District Court this afternoon after earlier admitting five counts of wilfully ill-treating an animal.

As well as the prison term, the judge banned Mankelow from owning or caring for animals for 10 years.

The SPCA said it was disappointed at the sentence, with national chief executive Robyn Kippenberger describing Mankelow's actions as sick, heartless and utterly reprehensible.

On September 27 last year, Mankelow found a box containing the five kittens.

With another person, he took the box and tipped the kittens out against the roots of a tree in a park.

One by one, his dog, known as PP, began to destroy the kittens, killing them by biting their bodies.

This was recorded on Mankelow's mobile phone, which was later found by a member of the public who, upon seeing the video, handed the device to the Gisborne SPCA.

Squeals of the agonised and terrified kittens, as they were put to death, were clearly heard on the recording, along with Mankelow's voice urging his dog to bite and kill them.

When two of the kittens managed to struggle a few feet away, Mankelow grabbed them and threw them back to be killed by PP.

The video clearly showed Mankelow's distinctively tattooed arm as he fed a kitten to his dog.

PP was later identified by SPCA inspectors, in part by the distinctive collars and very heavy chain to which he was attached.

Trained to viciously attack other animals, PP was unable to be re-homed by the SPCA and had to be euthanased.

"We are disappointed that Mankelow has not been given a considerably tougher sentence for the horrendous offences he committed against five very young kittens," Ms Kippenberger said.

"Even though Mankelow has not received anything like the highest level of sentencing available to the courts under current legislation, this result clearly reinforces the need for higher upper sentencing limits in animal cruelty cases.

"These are provided for in the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill, which began its first reading in Parliament last night.