Nasty Scald Water

[wsmoak]

Resurrecting an old thread... I am also struggling with this. After just two birds the water is nasty.

They are on grass, but it's not so thick that they can't find dirt scratching around. Not to mention the manure, even though I move the tractor twice a day.

Do you just figure, well, 150F should kill off most things, and they get washed down well in the plucker and again on the processing table?

Do you really use the same scalding water for 25 chickens in a row?

I guess, as bad as it looks after the first two, it really doesn't get any worse as you go on... :/

-Wendy

 

[MontanaMeatBird]

A couple of thoughts come to mind with your post. Scalding is dirty and stinky and it never feels good to gaze into a pot of nasty water. First, as mentioned before when the volume of water in the scalder increases, then the appearance is less nasty. It may be diluted a little more, but I don't believe it changes its "sanitary" condition at all. While I don't believe there is any danger when birds are cleaned properly (in the end) I still want to reduce the filth of the water.

1. A pre-dunking in warm soapy water could reduce dirt in scalder--making the water "last" a little longer. When one is doing a hundred birds this slows down the process a little.
2. Taking time to replenish the water and heat it up to temperature is a real momentum killer on processing day.
3. In the picture of the scalder I just posted (on another thread), I will install a filtering system that connects to the drain. It will then pump the "already hot water" back into the top of the tank. As I already mentioned, this will have little effect on the actual sanitary condition of my scalder, but it will make me feel better

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4. Your efforts at sanitation probably far exceed anything found in commercial processing plants.

 

[Hummingbird Hollow]

I always add a squirt of dish soap to the scald water. It doesn't keep it clean, but does deminish the smell. I also have been known to hose down a particularly dirty bird before scalding or simply dry-plucking a few handfulls of poopy feathers if that seems to do the trick. Now I usually am only doing 6 - 9 chickens per day, since I'm working alone, but have you considered having two scalding pots going at the same time. You could use one pot until it gets too nasty and then dump it and refill it. While pot #1 is reheating, you could usepot #2.

 

[ChickenJerk]

This is the "fecal soup" that the animal rights/ pro vegan organizations use to disgust people about the idea of eating poultry. They go even further by generating horror about the commercially processed birds being sprayed with a sanitizing agent to kill the bacteria that is unavoidably associated with scalding chickens.

I have been is commercial plants where the "contaminated" water is filtered (hardly to pure status, but a good bit of the stuff is removed) and then reheated to boiling, The temperature of that recycled water is then reduced with new water to the proper temperature.

Many plants spray down the birds to get the feathers wet before scalding. The process doesn't take as long then (less skin tears which are carefully avoided) and is somewhat cleaner.

I see nothing wrong with a sanitizer that lowers the bacteria count. And then there is that old tried and true method of protecting against food borne illnesses - COOK PROPERLY!