What is a good plucker?

For the ones butchering their own. I always skin everything, because it is easy and have no plucker. I am looking into getting a real plucking machine to help. The skin on is soo much better!! who has a plucker that works well? What brand is it, where did you buy it? Maybe you made one yourself, how does it compare?

Lazyfarmer was talking about one he made earlier today. Maybe check the posts and contact him.

We have an old revolving type plucker where you hold the bird as you roll the body over the revolving fingers.

It runs on a small electric motor.

If you run it with a big, electric motor it will rip a chicken out of your hands and launch it 40 feet up the driveway into the dirt. Chicken plucker becomes chicken chucker.

Since it is so old the rubber fingers have become brittle and the first three birds plucked look like the losers in a heavyweight extreme boxing match. Once the heat from the dipped chickens softens up the rubber, it works much better. Too hot dipping water also contributes to skin that is easily ripped. Do not overheat your water.

Our plucker flings feathers far and wide, so we hang a tarp infront of it to catch the flying feathers(and the odd projectile chicken) so we can rake the feathers and haul them away later. I think the drum types (picture a washing machine tub with fingers inside it) I don't think those make such a bad feather mess.

There are always a few pin feathers that get left behind and it is my job to do the final inspection, picking and washing of the carcass before it goes into its final cool bath.

I think the washing machine type makes less mess, but you drop the bird in, let it go and it flops and tumbles around. I do not like the idea of my chicken getting tossed and flopped around. WIth our old, messy design, you can prevent the bird from getting quite so jumbled around. But that is only a preference of mine as many LOVE their tub type pluckers.

uno wrote:

If you run it with a big, electric motor it will rip a chicken out of your hands and launch it 40 feet up the driveway into the dirt. Chicken plucker becomes chicken chucker.

I love your way with words Uno. You basically made my morning.
I'm not as advanced as some I still pluck the old fashion way.

I have a home made one that I've had for 25 years. It is the same type that Rochester Hatchery sells. It works well. No airborne chickens as described before. Check Rochester Hatchery online.

RUffled Feathers, we only fire up the Chicken Chucker if we're doing a lot of birds. If we are only doing a few, we pluck by hand. The hassle of wrestling this heavy, awkward item into place, rigging up a tarp or plywood to catch the feathers...this is tough because unused sheets of plywood are in short supply around here...it's a nuisance for just a few birds. Under 10 birds, we also pluck by hand. Some good, grippy rubber gloves help strip the feathers.

We borrowed a home built one this year and I actually expected a much larger mess of feather then we had. The finger wheel on the one we borrowed was wide open but feathers only seemed to fly approx 5' behind the machine. We are looking at building our own but we will probably put a hood on it so the feathers can't fly that far. Growing up we used a home built one that had the hood so the mess was very little! This one used to run approx 24 fingers and had a grate to help hold the chicken from being pulled deeper into the machine. The one we used this year had only 12 fingers and no grate, but worked very well. One of the biggest things to think about is who will be running it if you build your own as the height makes a big difference to the operator. As a shorter person it makes it really miserable on the arms and shoulders if you need to constantly be trying to hold your arms and a bird at shoulder height rather than chest height or slightly lower.

The other thing with the finger tote us if you allow your bird to lay fully on the fingers you can get a beat-up and bruised bird. You do need to hold the bird a little. A lot of it is practice. The first few times you use the machine you will wonder why you wasted your time as you probably will have bruised and ripped birds. But once you figure out the technique it becomes an easy quick job. My 14 year old son ran the plucker this year and did a very good job. One of the most important things to remember is not to get your scalding water too hot as mentioned.

My parents had purchased some birds who were picked by the tub style and Dad commented on how nice the carcass looked, but once you carved the bird you found a lot if damage. Within the carcass. I have not experienced this myself, just going on what Dad said

The I use shoots all the feather right below it so there is no mess expect a little pile of feathers. Two scoops of the shovel and your cleaned up. Yes you must hold the chicken above the fingers. It works well.

As I just posted, I butchered and one good thing came out of it. I had a drum chicken plucker before but sold it, it was a vast improvement over hand plucking. I built a new tub style plucker out of junk in the back forty, just ordered new fingers. Man did it work good, less then 20 seconds a bird, a few bird came out with absolutly no feathers, most had less then 5 feathers left to pluck off, tail or wing feathers. The other part is because you spray water as they are plucked the scalded layer of skin is removed and the chickens are gently scrubed clean. I had no broken bone or broken skin,(haha) the chicken were good too, they all came out perfect. Very impressed, as I built it for less then ***$, can not tell you as I may sell this one and build another. I did changes from the one I saw and I think that is why it worked so good. Mine is all alumimum. The feathers all come out in a neat little pile under the machine. It is so easy I would use it even if I was only doing 1 or 2 chickens. The chickens do not get beat up, or bruised as there is no blood left in them to cause bruising. Google (Whiz bang chicken pluckers) they are as good as they claim. They also sell all the parts, I got my fingers from them, not the cheap China ones off ebay. I paterned mine after theirs but made a few changes.

When my friends and I did our own chickens a few years ago we made and used one like this one: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It worked really well! Messy, but the thing worked and only cost about $5 to make.

Ruffledfeathers wrote:

uno wrote:

If you run it with a big, electric motor it will rip a chicken out of your hands and launch it 40 feet up the driveway into the dirt. Chicken plucker becomes chicken chucker.

I love your way with words Uno. You basically made my morning.
I'm not as advanced as some I still pluck the old fashion way.

Oh god I totaly agree. Uno you have a great talent of changing ones mood from crapy to laughter.
We also have a plucker like yours but it has not seen the light of day for years. And I can just picture a chicken flying through the air with the greates of ease.
Uno you should take all your writings and put them in a book market it as greatest depression helper. Make millions and retire. Oh and buy a better plucker.

karona wrote:
Uno you should take all your writings and put them in a book market it as greatest depression helper. Make millions and retire. Oh and buy a better plucker.

Tales from the farm. Yep, you could really do something with this. You never know, your following may become more large, you are a writer, you have been told this over and over. Thinking of a retirement...write that book of your stories. Unedited, (or minorly), just how you have spun those tales. Down-to-earth and real life drama, we love it. Do it girl...think of the retirement years, have wonderful days, with great health, CynthiaM.