Pluckers

[gardenchix]

Has anyone ever used the pluckers that hatching time sells ? They are heavy duty plastic and lighter weight than the stainless steel ones i would like to hear reviews on them

 

[casportpony]

Did you decide to get one?

 

[gardenchix]

Im

Did you decide to get one?

Im afraid to try it, its heavy plastic and looks good but its not cheap and if it breaks you lose that money, we all want a plucker to last more than a year and thats all they warranty is a year.

 

[RoosterML]

Im
Im afraid to try it, its heavy plastic and looks good but its not cheap and if it breaks you lose that money, we all want a plucker to last more than a year and thats all they warranty is a year.

So why go plastic? Yardbird is a great unit.

 

[The4Walls]

Just build your own. I did it for less than 50$. Works amazing. My son started renting the plucker out then got bombarded with requests to pluck, gut and bag other peoples chickens. We wound up doing 2000 birds with this machine. No issues. He is expanding his business this year and hoping to do upwards of 5000 birds this summer now that his name, and good reputation is out there in the community. He just turned 15.

I will do a full write up with plans and parts if anyone is interested. New to to forum. There may be someplace that is specific to home built equipment. Maybe I will post there.

So the just the basics for the home built plucker. You have to get a scrap, high end, front load washer. Has to be front load and Has to be high end. Kenmore, Maytag etc. What you really want is the back of the tub and the heavy duty main thrust bearings. That is where the main cost is for things like the Whiz Bang parts. We took it all apart and cut down the stainless tumbler so that we had the drive shaft and the back plate with about 1inch of rim remaining from the tumbler. We got plucking fingers on Amazon for fairly cheap. We used about 150 fingers. I prefer the smaller ones .75in x 3 in. I find them easier to instal than the thicker Yardbird ones.

The other key to the cheap scrap build is to find a furnace blower motor. 1/2 hrs. A standard one and not one of the ecm motors. The blower motors are 1/2 hrs and spin at 1020 rpm instead of the standard electrical motor speed of 1750 or so. This is key because you can then get any cheap pulley from a hardware store to gear to the right speed. That way you won't be buying a custom 16" or 17" drive pulley. We run 8 inch pulley driven by 1.5 inch pulley mounted directly on the motor shaft.

A blue 45 gallon drum fits perfectly inside the back of the wash tub that is now used for the base. The bottom of the drum gets cut off and that is the finger plate. It is attached to the back of the tumbler with the drive shaft. As an added bonus, grab the servo that controls the water intake for the washing machine. It is normally standard a/c power servo. We wired the electric motor and the servo to a switch so water sprays into the plucker automatically when it is turned on. As an added bonus, we have it plugged into a smart plug when we use it at our place. That way the plucker and the water are voice controlled through Alexa. Its kinda a party trick when people come over to do a few birds. The command is "hey Alexa, pluck the chicken". she says OK in her sexy voice and everything turns on. We then say " hey Alexa, cook the chicken" and it all shuts off with a perfectly clean chicken.
The practical side to having the water on the servo and voice controlled is that it frees up both hands for other tasks like scalding or final inspection for missed feathers or transferring to the cold tank.
We got our little set up working smoothly. My 14(now 15) year old son and I can process 35 birds and hour consistently. Thats killed, scalded, plucked and gutted. The plucker handles 2 CX birds at a time or up to a 24 pound turkey. Ive run Muscovies, Wild ducks and Canada geese through it. So far, so good.

its been a really fun project.

Home built plucker doing an 8 pound chicken in 15 seconds.

 

[3KillerBs]

I will do a full write up with plans and parts if anyone is interested.

This would make a great article!

There's even a current article contest you could enter it into: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/official-byc-article-writing-contest-13.1433228/

 

[Mosey2003]

Im
Im afraid to try it, its heavy plastic and looks good but its not cheap and if it breaks you lose that money, we all want a plucker to last more than a year and thats all they warranty is a year.

Just get a Yardbird. It's on wheels, so being heavy isn't that big of a deal, it's not like we pick up and carry our pluckers around. I wouldn't buy a plastic plucker like Hatching Time sells unless it was considerably cheaper than a Yardbird, and it sure isn't.

 

[TOR]

Just build your own. I did it for less than 50$. Works amazing. My son started renting the plucker out then got bombarded with requests to pluck, gut and bag other peoples chickens. We wound up doing 2000 birds with this machine. No issues. He is expanding his business this year and hoping to do upwards of 5000 birds this summer now that his name, and good reputation is out there in the community. He just turned 15.

I will do a full write up with plans and parts if anyone is interested. New to to forum. There may be someplace that is specific to home built equipment. Maybe I will post there.

So the just the basics for the home built plucker. You have to get a scrap, high end, front load washer. Has to be front load and Has to be high end. Kenmore, Maytag etc. What you really want is the back of the tub and the heavy duty main thrust bearings. That is where the main cost is for things like the Whiz Bang parts. We took it all apart and cut down the stainless tumbler so that we had the drive shaft and the back plate with about 1inch of rim remaining from the tumbler. We got plucking fingers on Amazon for fairly cheap. We used about 150 fingers. I prefer the smaller ones .75in x 3 in. I find them easier to instal than the thicker Yardbird ones.

The other key to the cheap scrap build is to find a furnace blower motor. 1/2 hrs. A standard one and not one of the ecm motors. The blower motors are 1/2 hrs and spin at 1020 rpm instead of the standard electrical motor speed of 1750 or so. This is key because you can then get any cheap pulley from a hardware store to gear to the right speed. That way you won't be buying a custom 16" or 17" drive pulley. We run 8 inch pulley driven by 1.5 inch pulley mounted directly on the motor shaft.

A blue 45 gallon drum fits perfectly inside the back of the wash tub that is now used for the base. The bottom of the drum gets cut off and that is the finger plate. It is attached to the back of the tumbler with the drive shaft. As an added bonus, grab the servo that controls the water intake for the washing machine. It is normally standard a/c power servo. We wired the electric motor and the servo to a switch so water sprays into the plucker automatically when it is turned on. As an added bonus, we have it plugged into a smart plug when we use it at our place. That way the plucker and the water are voice controlled through Alexa. Its kinda a party trick when people come over to do a few birds. The command is "hey Alexa, pluck the chicken". she says OK in her sexy voice and everything turns on. We then say " hey Alexa, cook the chicken" and it all shuts off with a perfectly clean chicken.
The practical side to having the water on the servo and voice controlled is that it frees up both hands for other tasks like scalding or final inspection for missed feathers or transferring to the cold tank.
We got our little set up working smoothly. My 14(now 15) year old son and I can process 35 birds and hour consistently. Thats killed, scalded, plucked and gutted. The plucker handles 2 CX birds at a time or up to a 24 pound turkey. Ive run Muscovies, Wild ducks and Canada geese through it. So far, so good.

its been a really fun project.

Home built plucker doing an 8 pound chicken in 15 seconds.

I would be interested in how you built it.
I am thinking of building a plucker.
More interested in the washing machine part.
interesting you can use a blower motor enough torque to start and run it. blower motor heck alot cheaper.