Suggestions on where to buy processing equipment

[Isadora]

Hey guys! We are raising a bunch of meat birds this year and plan to be doing so for the foreseeable future. At the moment, we have about 60 birds to process, but looking at a yearly number, it will be around 100. In the future, we may be interested in expanding and selling them. We know we want commerical grade equipment, like poultry man, but dang it's so expensive! We could buy it new from their website or Amazon or something, but I wanted to ask anyone else if they had any ideas where we could look. Craigslist has been a bust, thus far. I saw there are sections in this site for buy sell trade but not for equipment, as far as I could tell. We're looking for a scalder and plucker, but would be interested in any other commerical grade processing stuff.

 

[iwltfum]

My best piece of advice is dont skimp on the plucker. We bought a featherman pro a couple years ago and it has been completely worth it. We started raising turkeys and it can even handle large turkeys pretty well. We used a large pot over a turkey frier burner for a long time as a scalder. Last year we built a scalder with a water heater element in a utility sink. But I still keep the old propane set up around just in case. The electric seems a little weak for my full confidence. Buy good evisceration knives and learn how to sharpen and polish a knife edge to a mirror finish. I would also get some large poly cutting boards and stainless steel hotel pans for holding organs and cut up parts. We have been doing 250ish per year and this year increasing to 600+ broilers. Welcome to the addiction!