The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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.
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.)
Europe imposed strict export controls on it and other drugs in 2014, but I don't think vetinary supply has been affected.
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.
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.
I would say, no healthy animal wants to die.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s a good thing!
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knackered
[2] Google's Oxford Languages' etymology
But that's what they were made of originally - and still are in areas with bad overwatch.
[1] https://translate.google.com/?sl=de&tl=en&text=Knacker%0A&op...
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.")
"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."
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.
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.
Not to mention that there are numerous ways to shelter savings from taxes by having a bare-minimum farm.
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.
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)
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...
I was told then that explosives could still be used in some situations, especially if the "beach" was more mud than sand for instance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZHkr9KRM_c&ab_channel=World...
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://m.imdb.com/title/tt6044664/
A shepherd's idyll to ponder life and death for city slackers?
Cute.
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 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.