May sing a different tune when there are no chickens to bbq or the cost goes way up because no citizen is going to do that job for anywhere near what they paid that plucker.

good pin feather puckers are a lot more likely to be women in their mid40s and 50s or older and they are leaving that work by death , retirement or illness fast.

if a machine isn't plucking it any more it probably isn't happening.

Are you suspecting fowl play

Pin feathers are protein too....

Thats ok NWOTrapper. It aint hard to butcher a chicken. Can get old pallets for free to build a coop. Only takes a few weeks to get 100 of them big enough to butcher.

Where does this notion that because something is suddenly inconvenient folks are going to starve?

Did people stop wearing cotton clothing when slavery ended?

Perfectly clean bird feels like some sort of fake food, they leave a couple feathers to let you know it's authentic

I skin most of the old layers I can be done with that in a lot less time.

if we are raising Cornish cross for meat , then I will break out the scald and pluck, but for a few birds I just skin , need to be more than a dozen to want to pluck.

I have a cousin that will call me up , got roosters or layers that need to go , she just put them in the quarantine pen and I come at dark and snatch them off the roost.
she gets to pretend like they just disappeared in the night , no mess no worries.

I did it for many years, I made profit, and I sang many tunes!
Wait till next year!

That's the same whiney argument the slavers used when they lost their slaves......"how are we going to survive if we lose our cheap labor?" Somehow, some way, just like cotton continued to be grown, our chickens will get plucked and our fruit will get picked.

When I was a kid it wasn't unusual to see them birds killed cleaned in back of the local store. If a bird had pin feathers I imagine you could actual tell the guy the plucked it. That's when stores were truly mom and pops. IGA adds even told you the owner is in the store.
That same family now has stores all over the state.
Not much chance their killing birds in alley behind the store.

Mac

Not much chance their killing birds in alley behind the store

But they will be challenged. And that's good!

A machine left those feathers.

No one's watching the machine?

I’m retired now, but when I worked for state government, we’d get calls from orchards every year about helping them find pickers. High school and college kids were in school. County jails didn’t have the authority to put minimum risk offenders into the orchards. And they didn’t have enough staff to monitor them either. Few non-Hispanic people wanted to be on ladders all day. And with Hispanic workers, the growers had to provide housing because there wasn’t enough locally available. Interestingly, they were happy to bring in manufactured housing but such layouts came under local (zoning) and my agency’s jurisdiction. Nothing was an easy fix. Eventually they were able to rent enough manufactured housing in local campgrounds and manufactured home parks to get the Hispanics to pick for them.

There are both seasonal jobs and full time jobs going unfilled because of other considerations. Not everyone lives near where they work. This means having reliable transportation. Companies which provide housing are few and far between. Some factory and picking jobs are boring. Nobody wants to be bored for a paycheck anymore unless they have no other choice to make a living.

oh you will know if they are plucking in the back of the store , you can smell it
there is a distinct smell to running a scaled and pluck

after I had the wife plucking with me several years ago she walked into a Hispanic grocery and knew instantly what that smell was , they were scalding chickens in the back .

Nobody wants to be bored for a paycheck anymore unless they have no other choice to make a living.

Isn't that how it all works?

I’m going to rain on the parade. I’m familiar with that industry. Illegals are not doing that job. I don’t care what lies your hearing.

You're right,.I'll give a brief summation, thirty years in the packing house,..those jobs were done with legal authority,..until packers took opportunity.

Now it has been awhile and that steak or chop is no more reasonable than the last thirty years!
Cheap labor does not equate to cheaper costs.