Deputies on Tuesday discovered two malnourished children crammed into a locked dog cage and two more smeared with feces and urine in a barn in North Texas, in what a sheriff described as the worst case of child abuse he has ever seen.

The barn was “crudely fashioned” into living quarters, Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin said, adding that all the children were hungry and thirsty around 7:20 a.m. when deputies responding to a domestic disturbance found them on the property near Rhome, about 20 miles north of Fort Worth.

“There was plenty of food inside the barn, but the refrigerator and the cabinets had been locked so the kids could not get in to get food,” Akin said. There were three boys, ages 5, 3 and 1, and a 4-year-old girl, he said.

The oldest two were locked in the cage that was just 3-by-3 feet, and the other two were filthy and only partially clothed, Akin said.

Andrew Joseph Fabila and Paige Isabow Harkings, both 24, were each charged with four counts of criminal child endangerment, Wise County jail records showed. Harkings also was charged with aggravated assault.

Akin did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press, but he told The Dallas Morning News it’s the worst case of child abuse he has seen in his 44 years in law enforcement.

“I’ve not worked one where children are locked inside a dog kennel, and I find that absolutely disgusting,” he said.

The children were taken to Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth for evaluation. A hospital spokeswoman declined to disclose their conditions.

Deputies were speaking with a man and a woman, both 24, when they heard children’s voices coming from the barn, Akin said. The woman is the mother of all four children and the man is father to one of them, he told the newspaper.

A fight between the two is what brought deputies to the rural home, and the man had cuts to his face. They were arrested and each charged with four counts of child endangerment.

Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said the agency has had contact with the family before, but at a different location. She said the children were being evaluated at the hospital and for the time being were not in state custody.

U.S. employers posted the most open jobs in December in the nearly two decades that records have been kept, evidence that the job market is strong despite several challenges facing the economy.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that job openings jumped 2.4 percent in December to 7.3 million. That is the most since records began in December 2000. It is also far greater than the number of unemployed, which stood at 6.3 million that month.

Businesses have shrugged off a variety of potential troubles for the economy in the past two months and kept on hiring. The 35-day partial government shutdown began Dec. 22, and growth in China, Europe and Japan has weakened, threatening U.S. exports. Still, employers added 304,000 jobs in January, the government said earlier this month, the most in nearly a year.

The jump in openings in December suggests hiring will likely remain robust. Openings are typically filled within 1 to 2 months. The surge in available jobs indicates that businesses expect demand to remain healthy and that they will need more employees to meet it.

Tuesday’s data also showed that employers boosted hiring in December, while the number of people who quit remained unchanged at a healthy level of about 3.5 million. Higher quits are typically sign of a dynamic job market, as most people quit to take a new job.

The number of unemployed typically runs far ahead of job openings, but that switched early last year.

That could mean potentially stronger wage gains are in store in the months ahead. With job postings so high at a time that the unemployment rate is at a very low 4 percent, businesses may be forced to pay more to attract the workers they need.

Paychecks are already increasing, though at a modest pace. Average hourly pay rose 3.2 percent in January from a year earlier, the government said earlier this month. That’s near December’s figure of 3.3 percent, which matched the best pay gain in almost a decade. Still, wage increases typically top 4 percent when the unemployment rate is this low.

Many industries with the biggest increases in job openings include mostly lower-paying jobs. Restaurants and hotels advertised more than 1 million jobs, 84,000 more than in November. Health care job postings rose 79,000 to 1.2 million.