Well, I could not have asked for cooler weather to process chickens in May. This past weekend was beautiful so I processed 2 dozen. My wife's home community typically orders about 100 processed from us each year. But in the past, I have found that 25-30 is all I want to in a weekend so we raise a couple batches each year. The Yardbird plucker is worth its weight in gold. I use to do them by hand, then i built a drill plucker attachment that would make a mess of the flying feathers. This is the 2nd or 3rd batch I have processed with the drum plucker, and the process go SO much quicker. They are all Cornish cross chickens. I free range my chickens. I'm a believer that if you let a chicken be a chicken they will be healthier. We have a 600sqft run for the meat birds, and the actually used it most days. You can't beat fresh pasture raised poultry!

plucker set up and ready to roll.


in 15 seconds the bird looks like this. Only a few stray feathers to remove


sometimes I do 2 at once


Ready for the next step


Almost professional

Very nice. Do you have to scald before they go in to the plucker?

Does it work on wild ducks and geese?
Nice job on the processing and packaging.

Yes I scald them first in a bucket of 150* water.

Boco: I have not shot enough ducks in the last 2 years to try. And there are no geese migrating to So. IL anymore

I built one and did a couple dozen a few years ago. It was fun, to me at least. I had most of the parts around the farm, just had to buy rubber fuel line for the fingers. I can't see why it wouldn't work for ducks. Turkeys may not roll around enough in mine, though that ones looks like they would do okay. I'd like to do it again some day. Can't say the end product was worth the cost or work I put into it, it's still just chicken. But I enjoy it either way.

Nice! Glad to hear from ya pintail.

That's some professional looking processing there, nice job!

I don't know about ducks but the pluckers work on pheasants.

very nice , it is all about the scald not everyone realizes that

get that right and the rest is a breeze

my plucker uses the same type of fingers but is built from a food grade 55 gallon drum and HDPE board , the frame is painted wood

Looks real nice! How much are you charging per pound? We do enough for our family each year but pluck them all by hand.

From what I understand those pluckers do not work on waterfowl very well. Ducks and geese waterproof their feathers and so scalding them is not very effective making the plucker not very effective.

beautiful job!

Do they make a model that will do 4 chickens?

Beautiful job, Pintail!

Do your laying hens think something fun is going on in that magic tub?

Those cornish crosses look really nice. I need to thaw a chicken for supper!

it doesn't look like yard bird does.
https://www.yardbirdpluckers.com/

commercial pluckers may but the slow down isn't typically the 20-30 seconds for the pluck it is the scald hard to scald more than 2 every 30 seconds

I know they have the racks that hold 4 or 6 in the scaled tank but how much time do you spend loading and unloading it

to get plucked well they need to be able to roll around in the plucker

I am really glad to see a unit being made , when I built mine it cost me about what the yard bird does and has a larger foot print weights more probably doesn't pluck any faster.

when I built mine it was build a Whiz Bang or buy a commercial and those ran around 1200 dollars

How old are they when you cut them? Really nice packaging!

On a related topic,,, Way back in the day,,, my parents used to save the chicken blood from butchering to use for catfish bait. You collect it in a bucket but poor it right away into sheet pans about 3/8-1/2" thick. Don't stir it up! let it set and coagulate in the pans, then cut it into long 1" strips, pour it into covered dishes to take it fishing with you. Wrap it on a treble hook, and use a 10" piece of braided line tied to the eye of the hook to wrap around the blood to keep it on the hook. They caught A LOT of fish on it!

We do about 60-70 birds in four hours that way (4 man assembly line). Tell us more about how you package them. Those packages look nice and tight. I like the labels too.

Nice work. Professional looking job

Boco I knew a commercial duck hunter. He told me back in the day they hired women to pluck the ducks before they were packed in barrels of salt and sent to Chicago. They used paraffin to dip the duck into then rip it back off. He said after was used toss back into the big melting pot and keep dipping.

i'm in the process of building a scalder now.30 gallon trash can, propane burner with a electronic tempature control.