chicken plucker

Fatty Mcfatfat

As the time to "harvest" our Freedom Ranger chickens approached,we began to look into humane methods of slaughter. We found a good video on YouTube that was pretty persuasive, so we decided to model our process on his technique.
Meanwhile, the Farmer became impatient with some roosters that were harassing the hens, so he took a couple early on his own.

He reported that it took him 5 hours to process the two chickens, the time mainly being spent on plucking. So, we got very serious about researching chicken plucking, because the Farmer was ready to send them all to a commercial processor. Nooooo.....
After checking into renting equipment (too time consuming and costly to bother), we found plans for building your own mechanical chicken plucker. Mr. Cranky got to thinking and realized that one of our potter's wheels could be converted into a chicken plucker.

The Farmer contributed a big plastic drum~

We bought plans~

 a pre-drilled plastic plate and chicken plucker fingers from Herrick Kimball~

scrounged some scrap wood, bought a few screws and such~

and viola~

It literally takes about 60 seconds to thoroughly de-feather three birds at a time, no pin feathers left, nothing at all.

Now Mr. Cranky wants to become an itinerant chicken plucker.

Gorgeous porcelain