Meat ducks

[iajewel]

If you don't get them wet all the way through with hot water, its a night mare. Allot of people use paraffin too, but I can't stand using the wax

 

[FarmrGirl]

yeah, you'll want the water a lot hotter than with chickens. I usually go to about 160 and use a lot of soap and vinegar in the scald water. I use a short garden trowel to scrape the feathers backward while I roll the duck in the water. That way I can be sure it's penetrating.

 

[iajewel]

Quote:
I have never tried soap, what is the use of vinegar? The garden trowl is also something I will try. I need to do one here soon for Thanksgiving, so.. will let you know how that turned out.

 

[GrannyCarol]

I've raised Saxonys and Silver Appleyards for meat. The Silver Appleyards are larger, but my Saxonys brood and raise their own babies and make a good sized roasting duck. I've butchered right at 8 weeks, between molts (only a few days there where they aren't growing feathers), or at 12 weeks plus, when they have adult feathers. You do get a bit more meat on the carcass at 12 weeks, so I recommend that. The Silver Appleyards have a wide frame with lots of room for meat. I think their feathering is a wee bit looser too.

Be sure to dunk them in hot water (I use about 170 degrees) with a bit of dish soap in it for 30-50 sec. You know they are ready when you can easily pull a wing feather. I use a hose with a sprayer on them before I dunk them to force water up under the feathers. I used a drum plucker at a friend's this summer, it helped, but was a bit hard on them. I plan to buy and try this one next summer, if I have any to butcher:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHICKEN-PLU...709?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a6a81733d

I think this will work well, not too expensive and I can run the duck over it to get exactly what I want.

Hope that helps!

 

[AuroraSprings]

For those wondering what my "meat duck" improvement plans were, I started a separate thread.

 

[FarmrGirl]

Quote:
I have never tried soap, what is the use of vinegar? The garden trowl is also something I will try. I need to do one here soon for Thanksgiving, so.. will let you know how that turned out.

the soap and the vinegar both help to break through the extra oils on the feathers so you can get a good pluck. Of course, the soap alone does a pretty good job. I like using dishwashing liquid because it's low foam and has a degreasing agent. The garden trowl helps me not to burn my fingers

 

[patchencindy]

We have a Featherman plucker. Has anybody used one on a duck? If so, how'd it work?

 

[patchencindy]

Oops! Sorry, I just read the thread about the drum plucker. Guess that would be like a Featherman. When you say it was hard on the carcass, do you mean it bruised or...?

 

[GrannyCarol]

We were experimenting with the drum plucker and only doing 6 ducks, so, here's what I learned...

1) Two ducks in the drum worked fine - she had a water bath big enough for two at a time. There was still quite a bit of hand plucking, more than I expected.

2) We tried one duck in the drum, it would not roll around well enough and the top didn't pluck well.

3) We tried three ducks, left them in the scalder too long and ended up losing body parts (heads and feet) and tearing up the skin a bit. I'm not sure why we lost body parts like that, probably too much in the scalder.

All of them required more finish plucking than I expected. We saved quite a bit of time (usually it takes me about half an hour to slaughter, scald and pluck a duck, it took me about that long to do that AND butcher it), it wasn't the cure all that I'd hoped, it was still work! I'm not a speed bomb in the first place and working without my kitchen to butcher slowed me down. We averaged less than 30 mins per duck start to finish - I guess that was pretty good, as we weren't that organized.

I'm interested in trying the plucker that runs off a drill. I'm thinking I'll have more control over what part gets plucked and not miss parts of the duck. Also it's a lot more reasonable than a big drum, not that much more than the gas to drive to my friend's place to do them.

 

[zzGypsy]

I'm interested in your experience with the drill plucker... I'm looking at building a plucker, or maybe buying one, but if the drill plucker works well, that's a lot cheaper...