How Many Have A Yardbird Plucker?

[Molpet]

I have one. I like it. I can do 4 DP before cleaning a few feathers out. I take the feet off.
I have done a turkey that dressed out at 17lbs.. I took the feet and neck off and had to stop the machine and flip him.

 

[Mosey2003]

Bit of an update:
I just bought a Yardbird knockoff basically on Amazon for $299. I had $10 in rewards points money and they have a thing where if you forego earning points on a high dollar item, they'll give you equal payments for 12 months at 0% interest on your Amazon card, so I couldn't hardly turn it down. Works out to around $24/month. Having possibly 20 cockerels alone to do this year, I really want a plucker.

It has pretty good reviews for being cheap, and the reviewers have kindly included what they've done to fix a common issue, so I think as long as I'm careful with it I'll be fine. Excited!!!

This is it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076VW45J6/?tag=backy-20

 

[Molpet]

Bit of an update:
I just bought a Yardbird knockoff basically on Amazon for $299. I had $10 in rewards points money and they have a thing where if you forego earning points on a high dollar item, they'll give you equal payments for 12 months at 0% interest on your Amazon card, so I couldn't hardly turn it down. Works out to around $24/month. Having possibly 20 cockerels alone to do this year, I really want a plucker.

It has pretty good reviews for being cheap, and the reviewers have kindly included what they've done to fix a common issue, so I think as long as I'm careful with it I'll be fine. Excited!!!

This is it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076VW45J6/?tag=backy-20

looks good... things I like is it's narrower wheel base, my yardbird has the wheels on the outside and it doesn't fit through the outside basement door

 

[UPCluck]

Did 45 roosters last fall with the yardbird plucker. Did alright. From catching the birds to butchered and in the cooler I was doing about 4 an hour...the thing that took the longest was getting the water hot again. Have to swish the bird around in hot water for about a minute and dunk into ice water. Works better to chop off the feet before plucking as they will get hung up...and doing 2 in the machine at once seems to do better than just one at a time.

 

[LilyD]

I looked at those but went with the EZ plucker through CConly.com The reason for this was that we do turkeys ducks and chickens and at the time I got it about 2007-2008 they were the leaders in offering pluckers at the time and had a drum style plucker that could do up to 50lbs of bird at a time so would handle our turkeys who get close to 55lbs live weight. Because the drum is so big I can put three chickens in at a time or one large turkey or two ducks. It makes things much simpler in the long run. Biggest thing I noticed is that the hp of the engine is higher than the others to keep the plate spinning even when it's a heavy bird, otherwise it will just sit there and tear the skin. So whatever one you are getting I would def make sure that it has an engine of 1.5 hp or higher this makes sure it doesn't work to hard while plucking your birds.

 

[digbychris]

I found one on amazon, not the yardbird brand but a drum plucker for chickens. It was labeled as used but had not been, just a dent. I paid $300 for it. I think you can find them a bit cheaper than $400, but idk. The main issue was that the shipping was delayed, the control board panel was broken, and it was not corrected by the shipper in time for processing. They did very little to stand behind their commitments.
As for the equipment itself, get it. It's a huge convenience. I had previously fabricated a drill plucker that worked fine for for a few birds, but if you're doing a good number of them it just isn't practical
As others have said before and you probably already know, get the scald right. Too cold and the plucker won't work, too hot and it tears the chicken up.

 

[wyoDreamer]

Scald is the important part. Had to train DH when he came to help finish the last 4 of 13 that i was doing.

 

[Mosey2003]

Yes, I know I need to keep the scald at about 150. Gonna be a bit tricky maintaining that during a long run, but I'll figure it out. I have a little Coleman two burner stove, so I can either figure out what temp setting does the trick keeping it, or put two small pots on to boil and top up the scalding pot as it cools. I'm a little concerned a full pot might be too heavy for the little stove anyway. But I'll work it out.

 

[twigcrafter]

I'm late to the party, but Mine is awesome.

 

[Mosey2003]

Finally tried it, not bad! Still a few small bits to pluck. No biggie.