I posted earlier about my one meaty that died the day before we planned to butcher. We buthchered yesterday and the rest of them made it, but one couldn't walk yesterday morning. I think he may have fought with another one of the roosters and broke his leg. I processed him first. My FIL and BIL built me the most awesome chicken plucker! They started with the Whizbang plans and then put in a whole lot of Finlander ingenuity. We used pieces of an old rubber hose for the fingers instead of buying them and we used the spindle from a lawn mower to mount the bottom plate. We left the mower deck on, and turned upside down made the perfect feather collector. It shot the feathers out of the grass chute right into a bucket...
My Dad videoed the chicken plucker in action and I am going to try to put it on you-tube then upload it here, but it may take a while... It worked like a charm!! Plucked a chicken completely naked in about 10 seconds!!! And they were HUGE chickens... They dressed out at 9-9 1/2# each for the roosters and 7 1/2-8 # for the hens! That's twice as big as my last batch... I don't think I'll let them grow that big again...
My Dad videoed the chicken plucker in action and I am going to try to put it on you-tube then upload it here, but it may take a while... It worked like a charm!! Plucked a chicken completely naked in about 10 seconds!!! And they were HUGE chickens... They dressed out at 9-9 1/2# each for the roosters and 7 1/2-8 # for the hens! That's twice as big as my last batch... I don't think I'll let them grow that big again...
