Chicken plucker biuld

[rasorbackq]

All great ideas I like #2 best as its almost plug and play. But that's $500. Will have to wait til harvest season and see how it works after a couple hundred birds get the axe.

 

[oosik]

Ha,ha,ha-------- this thread has made my morning!! Funnier than watching a man try to put a saddle on a mule. However, I wonder, which is quicker - hand plucking or cleaning up after using the turbo pluckers.

 

[PHPaul]

Ha,ha,ha-------- this thread has made my morning!! Funnier that watching a man try to put a saddle on a mule. However, I wonder, which is quicker - hand plucking or cleaning up after using the turbo pluckers.

I laughed at the concept myself, initially.

The way our chicken processing system is set up (~ 60 birds per year for the freezer) is that my wife is Chief Plucker.

She's 72 and standing up while hand plucking 60 birds is no longer an option. Too hard on her feet and back, and WAY too hard on her arthritic hands. We even gave up raising our own birds as I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on a power plucker nor did I really believe they worked as advertised.

One winter of eating store-bought pigeo...er, I mean "chickens"... was enough to illustrate just what a bad idea that was.

So I broke down and built a whizbang.

Is it perfect? Nope.

Is it faster? Without a doubt.

Is it better? Close call, but it enabled us to continue to raise our own birds for a few more years, so worth every dime IMHO.

 

[City Farmer]

I haven't read the whole thread and maybe it's been suggested already. What about a 10:1 reduction gear box driven with a 1hp 3phase motor controlled with a VFD? Look here, they have hundreds of gear boxes that sell cheap. Use their search function and just type "gear box"
https://www.hgrinc.com

 

[mwb]

Video of how it works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMydVdwmuws

 

[rasorbackq]

When we cleaned by hand we would clean 30 birds, 5-6 people, say 8 am -2pm from walking to fridge (ready for the oven) to 6 minutes a bird ....walking to bagged , weighed and into the fridge. We ended up loosing all our friends after their second year.
3rd year They were always busy.... Have to pick up the dog crap or just had a manicure. My favorite was think I'm coming down with the Shingles.

I like raising my own birds . I can raise them to 10 lbs if I want.
I see those birds in the store and they are so small

 

[rasorbackq]

I haven't read the whole thread and maybe it's been suggested already. What about a 10:1 reduction gear box driven with a 1hp 3phase motor controlled with a VFD? Look here, they have hundreds of gear boxes that sell cheap. Use their search function and just type "gear box"
https://www.hgrinc.com

Whats VFD and why do you suggest a 3 phase?

 

[rasorbackq]

Some rough calculations:

A 30" feather plate has a circumference (pi times diameter) of 94.2 inches

At 172 rpm the rim is traveling at 22.5 feet per second or 15MPH. 172x94= 16168 inches per minute. 16168/12=1347 feet per minute. 1347/60=22.5 FPS or 15MPH (all numbers rounded)

Using the same numbers for a 24" plate gives about 12.25MPH

To get the same rim speed from a 30" plate as you get from a 24" plate, you'd need a shaft RPM of about 138.

On a 1725 motor that'd be a reduction of 12.5 to 1.

Based on one season's experience with my home-built Whizbang, I need to slow my feather plate down too.

PHPaul how are you figuring the 22.5 ft per second to MPH.
Was trying to do the math for 3450 rpm reduced by 30:1 to MPH
I end up with 15 ft per second

Or 10 mph figured it out.

 

[PHPaul]

Whats VFD and why do you suggest a 3 phase?

Variable Frequency Drive. Very common in industrial situations. A three phase motor is designed for variable speed applications and a VFD is the perfect way to control them.

However, that would require a source of 3 phase power. Normal residential service is single phase. Upgrading to 3 phase is EXPENSIVE! and highly impractical for a single application.

I expect he refers to using a VFD to convert single phase input to three phase output which is fairly practical in relatively low power applications.

I suspect the cost of a three phase motor would be prohibitive however.

 

[oosik]

PHPaul,

Since I've gracefully slipped from the "now generation" to being a mean old fart - my hands hurt like blue blazes, some times. If I were faced with cleaning, plucking, etc 60 birds - - I think I would find some place to hide.

I can remember a time - long ago, before dirt was invented - my dad tried "plucking" a brace of ducks by putting them in Mom's old GE wringer washmachine. I think that was the one & only time I ever saw Mom get mad enough to yell at dad. Brother - us kids all hid in the bedroom that day.

 

[City Farmer]

Whats VFD and why do you suggest a 3 phase?

3phase 1hp motors can be found really cheap. The VFD (Variable Frequency Drive) will convert your single phase power to 3 phase power. Then, you can fine tune/adjust the speed of the drum to anything you want.

 

[rasorbackq]

Variable Frequency Drive. Very common in industrial situations. A three phase motor is designed for variable speed applications and a VFD is the perfect way to control them.

However, that would require a source of 3 phase power. Normal residential service is single phase. Upgrading to 3 phase is EXPENSIVE! and highly impractical for a single application.

I expect he refers to using a VFD to convert single phase input to three phase output which is fairly practical in relatively low power applications.

I suspect the cost of a three phase motor would be prohibitive however.

I understand.
But I thought a house wiring was 2 phase so 220 can be had.

 

[PHPaul]

I understand.
But I thought a house wiring was 2 phase so 220 can be had.

Not quite. Residential wiring (in North America) is 220v split into two 110v "legs". Either leg to neutral is 110v, leg-to-leg is 220v. All single phase.

If you look at a breaker panel, the breakers on each side alternate legs to balance the load. That is , breaker 1 is on the "A" leg, breaker 3 is on the "B" leg, etc. A 220v breaker spans two legs, one from the "A" side and one from the "B" side, again to balance the load.

 

[EddieWalker]

We are raising chickens mostly for eggs and will butcher the males when they get big enough. My wife wants another chicken house just to raise them for eating and she doesn't want them to be in with our two existing chicken houses. When I butcher my chickens, I cut off their heads with an ax, then skin them. We freeze them and then cook them in the crock pot when we want to eat them.

Friends raise chickens for meat that they sell locally. They dedicate the entire weekend to processing them, which means a lot of plucking with a machine similar to what I think you guy are using. We don't understand why people want the skin on them? What am I missing? Why pluck a bird?

 

[MMagis]

A lot of people like the skin. Ever see skinless rotisserie chicken? Or skinless fried chicken?

 

[PHPaul]

Of the 60 birds we process each year, 12 to 15 of the smallest ones are left whole for "boilers" for soup and other dishes. These would need to be left skin-on as the fat under the skin adds flavor and makes excellent soup stock. We also like our wings with skin on for deep frying.

The rest of the birds we cut up. Neither of us care for (or can tolerate...old age and digestion ya know...) the dark meat so drumsticks and thighs are boned and ground for "chickenburger" which is mixed with hamburger (10% chicken, 90% beef) to stretch the burger and not waste the chicken.

Breasts are filleted and frozen, scraps are saved for stir-fry.

So while the majority of the skin is tossed, I can't think of a way to automate plucking just the wings so I'll continue to pluck the whole bird.

 

[BHD]

I understand.
But I thought a house wiring was 2 phase so 220 can be had.

you do not have two phases, you have a split single phase, the 220 is the single phase, the 110 come from splitting the phase in the center, and grounding it or putting the neutral in the center of it, Single-phase Power Systems : Polyphase AC Circuits - Electronics Textbook

two phase does exist, or did, but not in the resident home. and I do not think it is used currently in a commercial capacity, the standard now is three phase, three phase, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-phase_electric_power

 

[rasorbackq]

We don't understand why people want the skin on them? What am I missing? Why pluck a bird?

Chicken skin cooked just right all crunchy and greasy:dance1: yummy. Not good for you but still tasty. The skin keeps the meat most

 

[rasorbackq]

Not quite. Residential wiring (in North America) is 220v split into two 110v "legs". Either leg to neutral is 110v, leg-to-leg is 220v. All single phase.

If you look at a breaker panel, the breakers on each side alternate legs to balance the load. That is , breaker 1 is on the "A" leg, breaker 3 is on the "B" leg, etc. A 220v breaker spans two legs, one from the "A" side and one from the "B" side, again to balance the load.

Was thinking that the 2 120 volts were 2 different phases but they are out of phase by 180 degrees?

 

[joefromga]

Chicken skin cooked just right all crunchy and greasy:dance1: yummy. Not good for you but still tasty. The skin keeps the meat most

It is good for you. It's the flour that's bad for you. Why would anyone NOT want the skin on their chicken? That's crazy.