Any suggestions on a good plucker

[chicken6465]

There are pluckers out there for sale I would like some feed back as which brand to buy. Thanks

 

[Peruvian]

What number of birds are you talking at a time? 0-20? up to 50? over 100?

For over 25 at a time, a tub style will save a lot of time and effort. I would highly recommend building a Whizbang - http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/09/whizbang-plucker-story.html or consider buy a EZ-98 - http://www.cconly.com/processing/feather_plucker

For smaller batches, consider making a drill end version as they are cheap and will work just fine -

 

[Oregon Blues]

I've got an EZ Plucker and I give it a thumbs up. It sure makes butchering day go a lot faster and easier.

 

[Buster52]

EZPlucker 151 here and love it. Much less expensive than the other brands, and only slightly more expensive than building your own Whizbang, without all of the waiting and work. Plus it is bigger than the Whizbang.

 

[bwmichaud]

Having used a Featherman and an EZ Plucker, I prefer the Featherman and here is why.

The EZ Plucker plucks the birds faster than the Featherman but it also breaks more wings and legs. It seems to spin faster and has more aggressive plucking fingers. If you drag your hand across the fingers on the EZ Plucker, they have more grab to them. I would guess that the EZ Plucker takes about 15 seconds to pluck while the Featherman takes about a minute. (These are only estimates)

The EZ Plucker is built on a painted steel frame and sheathed in stainless steel while the Featherman is pretty much made of some type of very strong plastic. The EZ plucker frame and legs will rust so the paint underneath needs to be touched up to prevent this. There are also some sharp edges when you reach up inside the machine to remove feathers while cleaning.

The EZ Plucker on/off switch is a 2 button push button system and I have had problems with it. The Featherman on/off switch is a simple toggle switch that can be easily operated with your foot. My EZ Plucker switch was working intermittently so I took it apart to see what the problem was. It's really a very cheap Chinese switch with 3 sets of contacts. One of the sets of contacts had turned sideways so I took it apart and rotated them 90 degrees and it has worked fine ever since. The troubling part was that the ground wire was also wired through the contacts so the chassis of the machine was only grounded when the switch was in the on position. I have since grounded the frame properly.

I really like the fact that the EZ plucker has wheels but they are too small to roll it around outside. They do work great for rolling it around in the garage though which is really nice. The Featherman either has to be muscled around or moved on a hand truck which could be a hassle if you needed to move it a lot.

The cost of a new EZ Plucker is much less than the Featherman.

The Featherman doesn't move around on the ground like the EZ Plucker does. The EZ Plucker appears to have made to work on concrete floors and not outdoors in the dirt. The legs of the EZ Plucker dig into the ground if it's soft.

The stainless steel on the EZ Plucker came covered in plastic that was a pain to peel off. This of course only needed to be done once but it really was a pain peeling it off. Also, the corner protectors on the EZ Plucker fell off almost immediately. This isn't really an issue as they aren't really needed.

Please don't take this as me dumping on the EZ Plucker. I really do like it and I've been very happy with it and I would probably buy another. It's a pretty good value for the money.

 

[Oregon Blues]

Additional little note, here.

My EZ Plucker is set permanently on top of a garden cart with big tires, made for pulling through the dirt. So moving it around is easy. Otherwise, it would be difficult to move from storage to the place where I butcher.

I believe this would be necessary with any barrel type plucker. They are too heavy and awkward to just pick up and carry. None of them come with adequate tires for moving them across dirt or gravel. Seriously, is anyone butchering chickens inside their garage with a concrete floor? I doubt it.