Plucker to borrow?

[emilymaia]

Hi everybody!

I live in Santa Fe, NM, and I have raised a few meat birds (Black Jersey Giants) this year.

Here's one of them, alongside one of our superstar egg-laying Red Stars:



I'm ready to harvest the Jerseys, and am looking for someone in my vicinity (<150 miles away) who has a plucker who'd be willing to let me borrow it for a few days... Anyone?

I can't justify spending the hundreds of dollars they cost to buy one for just a handful of birds, and I'm not really handy enough to build my own, but I'm really not relishing the hours of hand-plucking either...

Thanks everyone!

Emily

 

[Maeschak]

Hi everybody!

I live in Santa Fe, NM, and I have raised a few meat birds (Black Jersey Giants) this year.

Here's one of them, alongside one of our superstar egg-laying Red Stars:



I'm ready to harvest the Jerseys, and am looking for someone in my vicinity (<150 miles away) who has a plucker who'd be willing to let me borrow it for a few days... Anyone?

I can't justify spending the hundreds of dollars they cost to buy one for just a handful of birds, and I'm not really handy enough to build my own, but I'm really not relishing the hours of hand-plucking either...

Thanks everyone!

Emily

Think you can send me some Horseman's Haven green chile???? : )

And sorry, no plucker... just a deep love for hatch chiles. I used to live in Santa Fe and got so addicted that when I moved to Seattle I would drive back to Santa Fe every fall just to get a sack of roasted chiles.... Now I live on the East coast and haven't made the 3 day drive yet to stock up on chile. Hopefully next fall. I digress - good luck finding a plucker! I must say though, I hand plucked roos for the first time this year and it wasnt as bad as I had anticipated. I used some rubber dish washing gloves and the feathers just seemed to rub right off. I did them two a day until they were all gone.

Good luck with the plucker-

 

[emilymaia]

oh boy, do I understand! if I ever move away from NM, I'll be coming back to stock up on green chile too!!!
Hey - I'll be in Vermont and Boston for Thanksgiving week... are you anywhere near there? I could probably fit a couple small bags of frozen hatch in my suitcase for ya! ;-)

 

[Maeschak]

oh boy, do I understand! if I ever move away from NM, I'll be coming back to stock up on green chile too!!!
Hey - I'll be in Vermont and Boston for Thanksgiving week... are you anywhere near there? I could probably fit a couple small bags of frozen hatch in my suitcase for ya! ;-)

Yeah man! I only used to get a sack a year and realized that I was slowly finishing up the chiles earlier and earlier each year. So I finally had to go to two sacks per year. Now, peeling and freezing two sacks takes quite a long time when you are sitting in your own home and sipping Tecate, but doing two sacks in a hotel room and begging the kitchen to let me freeze and store my chilis in their freezer then getting enough dry ice to get it all home is a real pain! But I love doing it every year.

I wont be in either place this Thanksgiving (Im outside of DC) but my brother-in-law is from Duxbury and Sictuate (sp?) so he goes to Boston quite often. If he is near Boston over T-day I will definitely beg him to meet up!

 

[speedy2020]

Quote:
With only few chickens, there is no need to use the plucker. It should take no more than 15minutes to pluck a chicken.

 

[emilymaia]

you could have plucked a whole chicken in the time it took to log on and write that oh-so-helpful post.

the thing is, I'm not that great at plucking since I don't do it very often (only a few birds each autumn), so it takes me a lot longer than you with your mad plucking skills. add to that that I broke my wrist recently, so hand plucking (which I did do some of last weekend) is painful and time consuming (45 minutes per bird). so that's what inspired my search for a plucker to borrow!

 

[peterlund]

Quote: Glad I didn't respond first..... yet exactly the same. Maybe OP should have stated his/her disability first.... oh, that would have been too much typing.

 

[donrae]

speedy and peter, you guys need to be nice. This is a new person to our site and you're not being helpful.

Doesn't matter why the person wants a plucker. I wouldn't be excited about going on a strange site and giving my location and the fact my hands aren't working well.

emily....

sorry about the oafs and hope your future experience here is better.


I'd also love to have a plucker. Maybe I'll see if one of the boys can build one for me. I do so few birds I do hand pluck, but it takes me a while, and I also have chronic issues that hinder my speed.

Maybe if there's enough call, the equipment rental places will start purchasing them and renting them.

 

[speedy2020]

Quote:
I didn't mean to come off the wrong way. If you find one locally, the time would it take to go and haul the plucker back home you be able to finish process few chickens. I thought about building one myself, but the cost and process only couple chicken a month not worth the trouble. The clean up time will take about 15-30 minutes.

 

[AllynTal]

For just a few birds, could you get one of those little drill-attachment pluckers that you put in an electric drill motor? I think they're like $50 or $60. Yeah, I'm a pretty good hand-plucker, but I couldn't imagine doing it with one hand. Actually, I couldn't imagine doing any part of the process one-handed. You'll need a helper for an extra pair of hands.