#but he was trying to get me desensitized to the sights/sounds/ smell of cattle in pain

[ofthehands]

I wonder how little the Sawyer brothers were when they started helping their Grandpa at the slaughterhouse. With child labor laws, of course, they wouldn’t technically be able to start working at the slaughterhouse till 14 or 16 or so, but tbh my grandparents do similar work and I started helping my Grandpa when I was like 6-10. 

How old do you think they were when they first watched a cow get slaughtered? When they first participated? Did they start by dragging the bodies away, or did Grandpa want them slitting throats and bashing in heads as soon as possible, so they could live up to his legacy? How long were they spending in the slaughterhouse, with the smells and sounds and sights of dead and dying cattle? How young were they when they watched the meat get prepared- when they watched them get strung up, watched the innards get tugged out? How old were they when they got used to it all? When the violence didn’t matter to them any more? 

And of course, if they were raised in the other kind of meat too, how old were they the first time they did all that to a human?