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.

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.)

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

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

I used to work on a farm run by vegetarians. As the only meat eater, they all thought it should be my job to do the dirty deed when any animal required killing. One thing I learned pretty quickly was that no animal wants to die. Killing the chickens was bearable, by I came to the end of my tether when I was called upon to help in the killing of a pig. It knew it was going to die, and fought it with all its might. Left the job shortly after.

There’s a scene in the film of Jude the Obscure where Jude helps slaughter a pig. It looked pretty real to me even if it may have been the magic of movies. I think they show the full horror of that moment because it's an important moment for the character[1].

Anyway, I've been a vegetarian since not long after seeing that, going on 25 years now. I can understand and sympathise with feeling as you did. I understand but don't sympathise with the way your colleagues left the dirty work to you, very hypocritical of them. I've known a few vegetarians like that, it's more about their personal disgust and hence, comfort, than it is about anyone else's suffering. They're also the most fickle, in my experience, hunger will soon overcome less important emotions, like notions formed as child. They're the ones you'll hear saying “I was vegetarian for years but one day I was famished and all I had available was a burger… never looked back”.

You have principles they are yet to know.

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/153/153-h/153-h.htm#chap10

"One thing I learned pretty quickly was that no animal wants to die"

I would say, no healthy animal wants to die.

Agreed. I have not worked with animals for much of my life, but recognize an animal that knows when it’s time is up. For my experience, there is something very dignified about such cases.

Wasn't it a bit hypocritical of the vegetarians farming animals?

Could not agree more. I was young (18) and was easily impressed by fatuous reasoning. These people would feed the farm animals, profit by their sale, yet not eat or kill them. Weak reasoning at best, hypocrisy at worst.

I'm curious as to whether you still eat animals, knowing that you couldn't stomach slaughtering them?

Good question. Shortly after that experience I became a vegetarian and stayed one for many years (with many small relapses). Around five years ago I rescinded, mostly because of health issues. Also... it is very difficult to be vegetarian where I now live.

Why would the pig know if was going to die? I've seen pigs butchered on a farm. The butcher just shot then once in the forehead with a .22. Instant lights out.

My memory is hazy on this. I remember the pig being hung upside down, and this would have been a clear cue that something was going to happen. However, this may have been after it was killed. The reason it was hung was to drain the blood.

Related... the silence of the lambs thing I witnessed first hand. A bunch of sheep taken off to be slaughtered, standing in complete silence. Welsh sheep are never silent, so it spooked me a lot. No visual cues as to their impending doom, yet they all stood there like ghosts.

From Thomas Hardy's book it is clear it is important the pig is kept alive until it has bled to death. Jude messes it up because he can't deal with it.

In butchering on farms, carcasses are hung upside down after the animal is killed.

Pigs are extremely intelligent, on par with dogs at least, and I've seen rankings that place them as high as 4th, behind only apes, dolphins, and elephants.

Sure pigs are intelligent but a pig that's never seen a gun before doesn't know it's going to die.

If there are regular slaughters, smart animals might notice a pattern. "We never saw Fred again after he went to that strange shed. Then we never saw Tom after he went there. Why the hell are they dragging me over there now?!??"

This doesn't mean that any pig could articulate "I'm going to die". That isn't necessary. Nearly every ungulate (maybe not moose?) has a built-in mortal fear ready to surface at any time. New events, or repeated events with bad associations, bring out that fear. It takes a great deal of training to relax that.

The whole concept of thinking about animals dumber than they are makes killing them more acceptable.

It's reading emotions/social cues, not objects. Animals are frighteningly good at that.

Maybe dogs. Not pigs. I've seen it happen several times. The pigs didn't put up a fight or act at all abnormal.

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

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.

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.

If you’re familiar with George Monbiot’s rewilding efforts, described in his book Feral (and presumably The Guardian articles as well), what do you feel, and what do you think?

My understanding is that the Welsh landscape has changed considerably over the past 800 years, in large part due to logging and sheep, and in its current state it is less resilient than it used to be; more erosion and less diversity of living things. I’m in favor of expanding beaver territory in the USA to change the land similar to what happened in Yellowstone, for example. I don’t have a long family history here, though, which makes it easier to daydream about culture shifts.

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.

I’m not sure about the whole of UK agriculture, but in our bit things have got even tighter.

That’s a good thing!

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

On a sidenote, many speakers of English probably are unfamiliar with the pronunciation of Dutch knakken or German Knacker (ˈknakɐ, 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...

"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.

It's also a very derogatory word in Ireland for a member of the travelling/gypsy community.

Who also used to be the knackermen back in the day, hence they became knows as the 'knackers'.

"Knackers yard" was a place to take horses for disposal, AIUI, and we'd - by extension - call a scrapyard (for cars) "the knackers yard".

We also use knackers and knackers yard in Ireland to refer to people who dispose of dead farm animals.

And “Knacker” is also a sausage because it “knacks” when you break it in half. Knack in German has the meaning snap or crack.

I’m glad you added the origin - sausages made from old or diseased animals don’t sound great.

"sausages made from old or diseased animals don’t sound great."

But that's what they were made of originally - and still are in areas with bad overwatch.

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.

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

yeah, that's the one. Toddler sucking his thumb in a pile of bone meal...

Isn't the whole domesticated animals thing that diseases only rarely cross animals to humans?

I suspect if he had dealt with chimpanzees if the organisms would have been more dangerous.

as to dealing with humans -- infant mortality was cut way down when doctors cleaned up between autopsies and delivering babies. It was a hard battle ("why should I clean up only to get messy again.")

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."

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?

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.

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)

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.

>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.

> 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.

Not to mention that there are numerous ways to shelter savings from taxes by having a bare-minimum farm.

With more than 600,000 Mennonites in the US (this includes the Amish), it's likely that Mennonite farms alone total half (100,000) as many farms as the UK has in total.

I am kind of convinced that the answer to every question “why is the US <blank>/why does the US <blank> and etc is “we have a imperial crapton of fertile land relative to population.”

It’s definitely the answer to why do we have so many small to medium farms. If you really really want to do it, anyone (with some money and a shitton of work) can buy land and try to grow things on it - this is not the case in most of the world, population density in places with farmable land tends to be too high to be generally accessible to the bulk of the population.

Excellent documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE

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.

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...

Beached whales are difficult to manage considering their dimensions ... and they attracting sharks.

I was told then that explosives could still be used in some situations, especially if the "beach" was more mud than sand for instance.

"Knackerman" performed by Vi Hart as a stretch goal for the Worldbuilders charity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZHkr9KRM_c&ab_channel=World...

So it's not that of the lithuanian chicken catcher in Wales?

Especially when your boss is not that much interested in animal welfare policies and just a tiny little bit more in occupational health and safety guidelines?

But nonetheless a hearty story.

Now, there even is a film about it:

https://vimeo.com/181216617

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6044664/

A shepherd's idyll to ponder life and death for city slackers?

Cute.

"None of them are easy, and in the case of animals that are insured, the owner will often make Carswell wait around for the vet to arrive, because it needs that official signature before a claim can be made. He does not like standing around beside an animal in distress waiting for a piece of paper."

The joys of bureaucratic procedures.

I know of (badly organised) farmers, who sometimes just let their sheep die in agony, rather than doing the formal procedures, as they are too complicated and expensive.

I agree that it is one of the most challenging jobs. You get to deal with farmers, the emotional toll on you, the cry of the animals, you get to experience that awful dead smell. One will only last long in this job if they have patience. A genuinely sentimental job that only a few can last.

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.

Here on the San Francisco Peninsula, we have a couple of veterinary services that specialize in in-home pet hospice and euthanasia: Peaceful Pathways and Restful Paws. (There may be others; these are just the two I know of.)

I hope I never have to use their services - may our dogs and cats pass away restfully in their sleep when that time comes - but I will sure choose them over going to a vet's office.

For one dog my parents got the poison and did the injection, the dog dying in my lap, peaceful enough (and very sad—-we had many adventures together). For another dog-companion, this in my adulthood, our regular vet was kind, considerate, and matter-of-fact; verifying we wanted to kill our old dog, injecting the poison as we held our dog, and giving us plenty of time to grieve. If it had been just me I’d have stayed to help move the body, or at least watch, for the extra connection to the lifecycle. I have so many positive memories of both dogs, and accept that I will be part in deciding how and when our current dog dies. I hope you find the right professional to help you and your companions if they don’t conveniently die in their sleep.

So I guess that is the origins of the word "knackered".

The term knacker is used in derogatory sense for Irish Travelers.

It’s used in lots of ways. Knackers is also a slang term for testicles. Knackered means tired.

"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.

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.

> 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.

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?

As an example, nursing is not only about holding hands and "helping the doctors".