[HN Gopher] The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming
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The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming
Author : sensiquest
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-04-25 07:00 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| jeromenerf wrote:
| I have had the weird experience of dispersing a dead whale, stuck
| in an urban shore. No explosives allowed, no toeing, no T. rex,
| no light saber ... and a ticking gas bomb indeed.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I assume you're referencing this exploding whale - an internet
| classic.
|
| Or do you usually use explosives? Here they are cut up and
| buried - the bones are often kept for carving.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/oregon-regrettably-exploded-8-ton-043...
| throwawayfarmer wrote:
| This is a good article. I'm a livestock farmer and a few lines
| really stuck:
|
| 1. We are incredibly grateful to our knackerman. The old one
| retired at about 70, and the newer guy is spot on. Calm, patient
| and pleasant to people and animals.
|
| 2. British farming (focusing on Britain here as the article does)
| has a crap safety record. Follow lens_leg[1] for a feed of UK
| farming casualties. It's saddening. But over this last year holy
| _fuck_ has mental health taken a dive with the rest of the world.
| And that won 't help physical safety/health
|
| 3. The author of this piece is correct when they say no farmer
| wants to see the knackerman. We hate having to call him out. But
| we do, because it's the right thing for an animal in distress.
| And unless it's a true emergency, we'd rather he euthanised the
| animal for us. He's more skilled and has less emotional
| involvement. Killing something - even if it's needed - isn't
| easy.
|
| 4. A request: Please don't lump UK farming in with the other
| countries farming practices for welfare and environmental
| practices. We surely do have our faults, but are also making
| great strides in making farming better. For example RUMA[2] for
| antibiotic usage and the NFU targeting net zero emissions by
| 2040[3]
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/lens_leg
|
| [2] https://www.ruma.org.uk/eu-continues-reductions-in-farm-
| anti...
|
| [3] https://www.nfuonline.com/nfu-
| online/business/regulation/ach...
|
| Edit: Formatting
| lostlogin wrote:
| Thanks for this.
|
| Regarding your point 4 - has the progress reducing antibiotic
| use continued post Brexit? I was under the impression that
| there were moves to slow/revert some of that once the EU had
| less say.
| petewailes wrote:
| Hear hear. Bumkin born and bred, living on the welsh borders
| and everyone around us is in farming in some way.
|
| I'm genuinely afraid for what the next 12 months will have in
| store in terms of the rates of things resulting for poor mental
| health for those in farming professions. It's been a terrible
| period.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Hello fellow borderer!
|
| It would take an essay as long as the op article to do this
| justice, but the farming community in this area is
| spectacularly insular, inward looking and isolationist. And I
| would know I am related to several. A year of Covid, and the
| new trading arrangements with the EU changing so many things
| is going to play havoc with mental health. Truly scary times.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| A term I haven't heard since reading _All Creatures Great And
| Small_ , where the local knackerman c. 1930 was described as a
| walking example of the hygiene hypothesis: surrounded by dead
| animals, and in the peak of health.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Just started reading these books aloud to my children. IIRC, a
| particularly vivid passage involves the Mallock children
| playing with some tubercular lungs, their rosy cheeks aglow
| hprotagonist wrote:
| yeah, that's the one. Toddler sucking his thumb in a pile of
| bone meal...
| djaychela wrote:
| For most of my life, my Mum and sister have owned horses, and
| unfortunately several of them have reached a state where they
| needed to be put down (the last two - one was due to chronic
| laminitis, and the last one due to old age and a pervasive
| respiratory issue which got drastically worse one day when we
| thought he was recovering).
|
| The knackerman who deal with the last pony was so good at his
| job, it made what was a truly traumatic experience so much more
| bearable. I had walked around with Tim (the pony in question)
| after the vet had been and made him as comfortable as possible,
| and he had been leaning on me (he was in his twenties and I'd
| known him since he was a 3 month or so old foal).
|
| When the time came to say goodbye, he was dealt with
| appropriately and passed away seemingly painlessly (the vet gave
| a lethal injection after a heavy sedative which saw him fall onto
| the floor pretty quickly). The knackerman left us time to say
| goodbye, and ensured that Tim's body was removed quickly and
| neatly, without us needing to see it happen. Moving an animal
| that weighs over a ton is clearly not easy, and it was done
| professionally and quickly. It was a relief to see him dealt with
| in a respectful manner, and was already a pretty horrible day was
| made much better by his professional manner and quick service.
|
| I think jobs like these are so easily forgotten by people who
| don't have to deal with this sort of thing on a day-to-day (or
| even year-to-year) basis.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| This is not how my Humane Society dealt with putting down a
| friend of mine's dog.
|
| I've sadily had be in the room where a few animals were put
| down over my life.
|
| The pricy vet drug was great. My dog felt no pain. Died in a
| millisecond. I died a bit that day too. The worse pain I have
| ever felt was over a pet.
|
| My point is my Humane Society used a drug that slowly killed
| the animal. The animal did not look content. She looked at me,
| like "What's going on?". It wasen't my animal, but I felt it's
| misery. The only reason I was there is the owner couldn't
| handle the prolonged death. It was a good 8 plus minutes of
| dying.
|
| My point is I don't know if the Humane Society purposely used a
| drug that didn't kill the animal immediately so the family
| could spend time with a dying pet. I don't know why they didn't
| use a drug that would stop the heart completely?
|
| The horrid reason these dogs were put down was due to Section 8
| housing laws. A busybody in the complex didn't like my friend
| who fell on hard times, and was trying to get her to move in
| abusive verbal ways. This horrid human just didn't like my
| friend, and had pull at the housing complex. She turned the
| dogs into Sec. 8 authorities for being a few pounds over 25. My
| friend put the dogs down. I still recall her asking me if by
| putting the dogs down was she being egocentric. I didn't say
| anything because she was literally living in a beach parking
| lot a few weeks before.
|
| (Sorry about going on, and on. The death of any animal just
| tears me to pieces. Oh yea, I looked at the 42 page Section 8
| lease. Yes---42 pages of "You can't do this, and you can't do
| that." My main point was I feel the Humane Society should use
| the most effective, fast acting, drugs available when they put
| an animal down.)
| mewse-hn wrote:
| Purely speculation but drug companies a few years ago stopped
| shipping the chemicals for execution by lethal injection on
| moral grounds - vets may have been affected by that and had
| to resort to less effective substances
| hackbinary wrote:
| Pentobarbital, aka Euthasol, aka bluejuice, is a
| barbiturate and is what is commonly used for small animal
| euthanasia.
|
| Europe imposed strict export controls on it and other drugs
| in 2014, but I don't think vetinary supply has been
| affected.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16281016
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenytoin/pentobarbital
| lucasnortj wrote:
| who cares, go vegan already
| unixhero wrote:
| So I guess that is the origins of the word "knackered".
| botwriter wrote:
| The Kennels of an estate I used to work at also did knackering
| work. Its not the faint of heart, I know of at least one stable
| hand who hung herself there.
| [deleted]
| thefifthsetpin wrote:
| "Knackerman" performed by Vi Hart as a stretch goal for the
| Worldbuilders charity:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZHkr9KRM_c&ab_channel=World...
| wolfretcrap wrote:
| Offtopic: as someone from India, I've seen a lot of American
| farms and farmers on YouTube but I don't see British farmers on
| YouTube, why is that?
| hkt wrote:
| Probably the structure of the industry: American farms are (as
| I understand it) not generally family affairs and are run by
| big companies. In the UK there's still a heavily feudal element
| in terms of who owns the land, with many tenant farmers etc who
| won't have press offices and the like. Willing to bet it is
| that.
| xnyan wrote:
| >not generally family affairs
|
| You're absolutely right in that most of the food we eat in
| the US is grown on a relatively small number of huge
| commercial farms, but interestingly enough about 80% of the
| ~2 million farms in the US are classified as small, which
| means they earn less than $350k annual revenue. That's 1.8
| million small farms in the US, by comparison there are
| ~200,000 farms total in the UK. It's just a numbers game,
| there are vastly more farms in the US than the UK.
|
| Keep in mind, many of these small farms are __very__ small,
| half of them generate less than $10k annual revenue and 80%
| earn less than $100k. At that scale they can't compete on
| price, so they usually focus on the quality of what they
| grow, and for that to work you have to market your crop which
| means farmers markerts, facebook, youtube and any other way
| they can think of to get their product out there.
|
| Also at the $10k or less annual revenue level (about 1
| million farms), often the the farm is only nominally a
| business and in practice it's closer to a hobby or lifestyle.
| I live in a semi-rural area that's close to a high-income
| metro and there's always been a constant stream of people
| retiring from city life to go live in the "country" and farm,
| in most cases they have savings or other income and only sell
| their produce to offset some of the cost of production or
| just because they are proud of their produce.
| xnyan wrote:
| Probably just numbers. There are ~2 million farms in the US and
| ~200k in the United Kingdom.
|
| As an aside, I love UK produce and when it's available to me in
| the US I'm generally quite happy with it. France probably makes
| the best butter, Le Beurre, but it's too expensive for me to
| use regularly. British Double Devon is a true delight and even
| something basic like Kerrygold is very present and better than
| 90% of commercial US butter. I'm lucky enough to live down the
| road from a nice dairy farm and get most of my butter from
| them, but the UK has some truly good butters at an affordable
| price.
| throwawayfarmer wrote:
| Try these:
|
| Tom Pemberton: https://www.youtube.com/c/TomPembertonFarmLife
|
| Olly's Farm: https://www.youtube.com/c/Olly'sFarmLtd
|
| The Hoof GP: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheHoofGP (good one)
| gadders wrote:
| Twice where I live in Kent we've had dead ponies dumped at the
| side of the road to avoid the fees they have to pay to the
| knackerman.
| knolan wrote:
| The term knacker is used in derogatory sense for Irish Travelers.
| Veen wrote:
| It's used in lots of ways. Knackers is also a slang term for
| testicles. Knackered means tired.
| someperson wrote:
| The term "knackered" (British slang for tired or exhausted) may
| have derived from the term "knacker" (a slang term meaning "to
| kill," but also "to tire, exhaust, or wear out." [1]) And the
| origin of the term "knack" itself is "probably related to
| obsolete knack 'sharp blow or sound', of imitative origin
| (compare with Dutch knak 'crack, snap')" [2]
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knackered
|
| [2] Google's Oxford Languages' etymology
| domano wrote:
| "Knacker" is a somewhat oldish word for "old guy" in german -
| maybe related? Also comes from the word "knack" with the same
| meaning as in dutch.
| ruph123 wrote:
| And "Knacker" is also a sausage because it "knacks" when you
| break it in half. Knack in German has the meaning snap or
| crack.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm glad you added the origin - sausages made from old or
| diseased animals don't sound great.
| secondcoming wrote:
| It's also a very derogatory word in Ireland for a member of
| the travelling/gypsy community.
| celticninja wrote:
| Who also used to be the knackermen back in the day, hence
| they became knows as the 'knackers'.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| "Knackers yard" was a place to take horses for disposal,
| AIUI, and we'd - by extension - call a scrapyard (for
| cars) "the knackers yard".
| distributedsean wrote:
| We also use knackers and knackers yard in Ireland to refer
| to people who dispose of dead farm animals.
| morsch wrote:
| On a sidenote, many speakers of English probably are unfamiliar
| with the pronunciation of Dutch knakken or German Knacker
| ('knaka, you can listen to Google Translate's rather mediocre
| rendition[1]). Kn in word-initial position is fairly common,
| and the k is not silent in these languages, nor is there an
| aspiration between k and n.
|
| [1]
| https://translate.google.com/?sl=de&tl=en&text=Knacker%0A&op...
| hirundo wrote:
| > (and it is generally a job done by men)
|
| Funny that there haven't been more efforts to make such jobs more
| gender inclusive, as there have been for doctors, professors and
| CEOs. It's as if those movements are about seeking higher status
| rather than greater equality.
| brazzy wrote:
| Smae reason there aren't more efforts to make more men into
| cleaning or nursing. The point of inclusion efforts is to help
| people who want to do a job they are qualified for, but are
| prevented from doing by discrimination.
| Veen wrote:
| The consequence of which is men doing all the dangerous and
| dirty jobs no one else wants, particularly working-class men
| who don't have other options. Doesn't that sound like
| discrimination?
| raverbashing wrote:
| As an example, nursing is not only about holding hands and
| "helping the doctors".
| DanBC wrote:
| > Smae reason there aren't more efforts to make more men into
| cleaning or nursing
|
| There are efforts to get more men into nursing. These are
| easy to find with a simple Google search.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| That an article contains a provocation is not a good reason to
| bring it in here and set the thread on fire. What to do
| instead: leave it there and wait for the activation to settle
| before posting. We're trying for _curious_ conversation here,
| and repetition and flamewar go against that.
|
| If you (or anyone) would like a fuller explanation of how and
| why this kind of generic tangent goes against the intended use
| of HN, there's a recent one here, with a bunch of links to
| others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26894739.
| eplanit wrote:
| Props to Bella Bathurst -- what an enjoyable writing style
| (despite a rather grisly subject). I'm still laughing at:
|
| "As he drove, Carswell concentrated on his schedule, sitting with
| the steering wheel held in front of him like a man before a
| Sunday roast."
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