The Chicken Plucker?

[rancher hicks]

Anyone here got one and if so how is it? Does anyone else pluck their own chickens and what do you use?

 

[erinszoo]

We don't have one but we pluck our own chickens by hand. My daughter and I can do a bird in less than 20 minutes. There are probably others on this site who have used a plucker. You might want to post in the meat bird forum as they talk about processing birds a lot. Also if you've ever seen a magazine called Backwoods Home, one of their regular writers (Jackie Clay) talks about using a chicken plucker on her blog. You can google it. I'd post a link but I am really rather illiterate on the computer and don't know how to do that.

Just to add, we scald the birds in about 165 to 170 degree water for about a minute or so. The feathers come right out.

 

[rancher hicks]

Thanks for the reply and you're right about the "meat" bird thread. I was thinking about the mess and doing more than one bird at a time. I don't have time to do one at time and would like to do them all at once. I expect I will be doing it alone.

 

[erinszoo]

We try to do about five birds at a time ... and yes it's kind of a mess but I don't know how to get around that. I keep a bowl of water nearby to rinse my ringers in when they get too feathery as I'm plucking. If you're doing it alone, try to rig up something to hang the birds from to hold it while you're plucking otherwise your arms will fall off ... lol. Even with a plucker, you still have to gut them by hand and get them chilled, etc. You won't want to do twenty in a day anyway.

 

[rancher hicks]

How bad does it smell? I don't want to attract coyotes or fox or anything like that. Do you toss lime around?

 

[erinszoo]

It doesn't really smell unless you do it when it's hot out and then only if you leave the innards in the sun. No we don't use lime at all. We bleed the chickens into a bucket lined with a trash can liner and put all the innards we don't want into it as well. Anything we do want goes into a bowl of ice immediately and as soon as we wash off the chicken it goes into salted ice as well. When we finish we tie up the trash bag and put in into a second trash bag and put it in the trash. We've never had a predator problem but then we don't have coyotes in town.

 

[rancher hicks]

I think I've been hearing coyotes not to far away. I haven't seen any but they might be about. I'd hate to attract them.

 

[ScottnLydia]

There CAN be coyotes anywhere, even in the city! When we lived in Seattle, there was a huge uproar when coyotes started to approach children in city parks. It really hit the fan when one nipped a child that was walking with his/her mother in one of the parks!

Even if you don't have coyotes, neighborhood dogs could get into it, so always assume the worst. Feathers aren't a problem, just blood and offal.

My wife and I hand pick and do about 6 to 8 a day. We dispatch and pluck 2 at a time, but since I do the gutting, that's just 1 at a time. I think that's the real slowdown. No matter how fast you pluck them, you still have to gut them.

By the way, 8 chickens is all we can fit on the bottom shelf of our fridge for 4 days of aging, so it works out.

Oh, on the Meat Bird Forum someone had a plucker made from some PVC pipe and rubber plucker fingers that attaches to a drill. Their video shows it working well.

If you have the room, get a llama

, you'll never have to worry about coyotes, foxes, dogs, etc ever again!!! We haven't even lost a chick to a hawk since we got ours. We live in a coyote heavy area and hear them all around us nightly. When it snows I check for tracks and find that they won't come within about 100 feet of our fence. Thank you Moofy!

~S

 

[rancher hicks]

I think it might have been her two yippee dogs nextdoor, but I could be wrong.

Anyhow I still "mark" my territory every time I have to go when I go out to the back. There is a blown down tree now that covers quite a length of the yard so I mark that real good. We have rabbits running around so I figure all is good.

Saw a bunny in my garden this afternoon. I've see eyes peeking from under a pile of branches in the middle of the yard at night. I also have an adult I see nearly every night. I don't bother them and they don't bother me.

It's even crossed the yard in the middle of the day like it was no body's business, while I was working on the recent half hoop coop.

I haven't gotten to the processing part yet, but may in the spring or next fall, if I get more BR roosters going. With money tight and the price of feed I don't know. I do know I'm becoming more wary of commercial food though.

 

[ScottnLydia]

If you mark your territory, eat asparagus. Then they'll know you mean business!

~S