Two friends and I went in on this plucker this past season. We raise hens for eggs and broilers for our families and also for customers. We used to rent a Featherman setup from a friend, but they were an hour away and they also raised broilers commercially, so there were sometimes scheduling conflicts. We needed a good balance between affordable (the ultimate would be doing it yourself) and "a husband-free project" as one husband was building a house and another was driving over-the-road at the time. So, of course the Whiz-Bang manual to make your own chicken plucker was out of the question for us. Splitting it three ways, among three women who raise commercially (although on a small scale, nothing like Polyface Farms or anything), this was very affordable compared to the Featherman setup.
None of us had ANY complaints about the Featherman. But this plucker works just as well as that one, in our experience. The EZ Plucker people offer a few sizes, so be careful which one you order - check the capacity. The one we have is the EZ-151.
The plucker weighs 135 pounds. It comes with casters, although I'm not sure I know many backyarders who have a nice concrete surface to process their chickens on - we all do it on our lawns. So we just detached them, they come off easily. We also designated a specific dolly for it and added plywood to the dolly in places to better support the plucker when bringing it around the yard alone (it is hollow on the bottom, to facilitate easier rinsing I suppose). A couple handles on each side, down by the base of the unit would make buddy lifting it much easier. But we manage fine for how large this thing is.
We found that this plucker handles easily in a 30-second spin: 4 smaller chickens (3.5-4# dressed), 3 larger chickens (5-6#), 1 turkey. We have not attempted quail, pheasant or other game birds using this machine. We have not attempted ducks or geese using this machine.
You will need scald birds fast enough to keep up with this thing. A good scald at 145 degrees F was optimal (below 140, you'd get a poor pluck; above 150, you'd get torn skin), but if you're just doing the stock pot method of scalding, the chickens would cool off and only one would pluck well. We rigged a scalder with electric elements and thermostat, but we kept having problems getting the water up to temperature and wound up heating up three stockpots on our large gas grill to scald with. When you're doing 60 birds in one go, it's a huge pain to keep an eye on that water if it's not temperature controlled. My husband, now that the house is done, has volunteered to modify the Whiz-Bang Chicken scalder plans and build us one (thermostat controlled, but heated with propane instead of electric). Since you have to stand there and monitor the scald, we do not feel the automatic dunker in those plans is worth the time & materials, so we are just going to hand dunk or rig up a shackles-type dunker.
Again, the Featherman product we had been renting worked just fine - we are trying to save some money & time by setting up our own scalder unit.
Be sure to thoroughly rinse and clean the plucker between spins and right away after the last pluck. Otherwise you'll be unclogging a stuck plucker that won't spin.
A lot of people online say they can just pay to get their birds processed, but one year we got busy and tried to find someone to do ours - NOBODY does it around here. So we gave our number to the local butcher after getting the plucker, because they get a lot of calls asking if they will do chickens and they don't - but we decided to rent this equipment out and they can give folks our number to arrange it. We do take a cash damage deposit up front. Hopefully, this will help the plucker & eventually scalder to pay for themselves even quicker.
None of us had ANY complaints about the Featherman. But this plucker works just as well as that one, in our experience. The EZ Plucker people offer a few sizes, so be careful which one you order - check the capacity. The one we have is the EZ-151.
The plucker weighs 135 pounds. It comes with casters, although I'm not sure I know many backyarders who have a nice concrete surface to process their chickens on - we all do it on our lawns. So we just detached them, they come off easily. We also designated a specific dolly for it and added plywood to the dolly in places to better support the plucker when bringing it around the yard alone (it is hollow on the bottom, to facilitate easier rinsing I suppose). A couple handles on each side, down by the base of the unit would make buddy lifting it much easier. But we manage fine for how large this thing is.
We found that this plucker handles easily in a 30-second spin: 4 smaller chickens (3.5-4# dressed), 3 larger chickens (5-6#), 1 turkey. We have not attempted quail, pheasant or other game birds using this machine. We have not attempted ducks or geese using this machine.
You will need scald birds fast enough to keep up with this thing. A good scald at 145 degrees F was optimal (below 140, you'd get a poor pluck; above 150, you'd get torn skin), but if you're just doing the stock pot method of scalding, the chickens would cool off and only one would pluck well. We rigged a scalder with electric elements and thermostat, but we kept having problems getting the water up to temperature and wound up heating up three stockpots on our large gas grill to scald with. When you're doing 60 birds in one go, it's a huge pain to keep an eye on that water if it's not temperature controlled. My husband, now that the house is done, has volunteered to modify the Whiz-Bang Chicken scalder plans and build us one (thermostat controlled, but heated with propane instead of electric). Since you have to stand there and monitor the scald, we do not feel the automatic dunker in those plans is worth the time & materials, so we are just going to hand dunk or rig up a shackles-type dunker.
Again, the Featherman product we had been renting worked just fine - we are trying to save some money & time by setting up our own scalder unit.
Be sure to thoroughly rinse and clean the plucker between spins and right away after the last pluck. Otherwise you'll be unclogging a stuck plucker that won't spin.
A lot of people online say they can just pay to get their birds processed, but one year we got busy and tried to find someone to do ours - NOBODY does it around here. So we gave our number to the local butcher after getting the plucker, because they get a lot of calls asking if they will do chickens and they don't - but we decided to rent this equipment out and they can give folks our number to arrange it. We do take a cash damage deposit up front. Hopefully, this will help the plucker & eventually scalder to pay for themselves even quicker.