[HN Gopher] The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming ___________________________________________________________________ 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." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-25 23:00 UTC)