As the Maronde’s get ready to process their first birds, Pastor Maronde gives a tour of the set-up, showing some newer technology that makes an old task a bit easier. The equipment pictured is from Featherman Equipment in Missouri (https://www.feathermanequipment.com/).
Grandma would’ve liked to process chickens this way!
What chicken plucker did you get? We’re allowed to have 4 chickens in our town, so I am not on as big of a scale as you, but I wanted a place to start looking since there are so many brands of pluckers. Thanks!
We purchased our plucker from Featherman Equipment in Missouri. We have been very happy with the plucker from them; I’ve had a few issues with the scalder, but generally that has worked well too. If you watch pluckers on YouTube, you will often see someone standing there with a garden hose as the chicken is being plucked. This plucker has water connected to the machine, which makes it easier, although you then have to plan on having an extra hose in your processing area (you will always want easily accessible water when you are processing to wash tools, chickens, etc.). It is a really nice plucker. You will need to check the price and see if it is worth it for the small number you are processing; we did close to 160 chickens this year–finished this morning!–and plan to double that number next year. With any amount of volume, a good plucker is, I think, a must, and Featherman is one of the best brands out there.
Here’s the link to their website: https://www.feathermanequipment.com/product-category/pluckers/