Store bought pluckers

[Clay34]

I'm looking into buying a plucker. Bluntly if you buy a new motor and the parts a store bought unit isn't that much more than just buying all of the parts for a WhizBang style plucker in my opinion. If you want to share some sources for materials that are reasonable that is fine too.

I see that the Featherman Pro is kind of the standard, but at $1060 before shipping, it's out of my price range. Then I see the EZ pluckers. Something along the lines of an EZ 131 for about $600 before shipping seems like a reasonable price. I see some cheaper machines out there in the $400 range, but I haven't read anything good about them from anyone that has been on the site for a while.

Am I missing something? Is there a machine that is sub $600, that has a 1 HP motor and a quality build that I am missing?

Anyone use anything like this straight off the boat from China? http://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...1876185762.html?spm=a2700.7724857.35.1.ln1lQ8

That's probably a wholesale price but $120 to $150 US, I can't buy a new motor for that.

I have the tools and the aptitude to do a build, but the numbers just don't add up for me. I see WhizBang kits for almost $400 without a motor and barrel.

I also notice that many of the store bought units use dual belt drives and have a nice chute for feather discharge.

I actually rented a machine to use this year and was considering building one over the winter, but the more that I thought about it, I should just buy one.

Your thoughts are welcome. I see myself doing 50 to 100 birds per year.

 

[Nupe]

I have the smallest EZ plucker. It plucks 2 chickens at a time. We process about 50 birds a year. Since I'm taking underweight rejects out of my brother's commercial farm, I get them at staggered sizes so I only need to process about a dozen a week until they're gone. My plucker works like a champ.

 

[fouroaks]

We bought the ezplucker 131 and it is worth every penny. The unit worked great and almost all the feathers were gone just A few had to be pulled. And we like that it is Stainless steel for cleaning. Well worth the money.

 

[Clay34]

I really like the dual belt drive in the EZ131.

 

[fouroaks]

Yes and also this is 1hp motor and has wheels to we love the plucker we have done 25 birds. Already this year with it.

 

[fouroaks]

Anyone use anything like this straight off the boat from China?

Just remember if buy from China and it shows up damaged you are **** out of luck when dealing with them. I personally would not but a big ticket item from China of the boat. To much money at stack they deal only with cash.

 

[chicapee]

We built our own using a 25 gallon drum we had laying around, a washing machine motor found at the dump, plucking fingers from amazon, pulleys, spindles and belt from tsc. Treated 2x4s. Cost around $100.00 worked great.

 

[Clay34]

I do think that is the beauty of the WhizBang design: if you can scavange some parts and use some materials you already have, you can build a workable nice piece for a reasonable amount.

What this thread is about, is buying everything NEW for a WhizBang including a nice feather plate, Motor etc and then the cost is actually fairly close to just buying an EZ-131 as an example. When I crunched the numbers my supplies alone were over $500. The unit that I speced out would have no feather chute and it did not have a dual drive pulley system. I had to still take time to build it while I am crazy busy.

I did see a Star-Plucker sold by CCOnly that was uner $400, but it had a small motor: 1/2 HP and I thought the unit was just too small in power for the long term. I would like to see if anyone has actually used one.