Chicken plucker biuld

rasorbackq · Feb 5, 2016

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 · Feb 5, 2016

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 · Feb 5, 2016

oosik said:
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 · Feb 5, 2016

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 · Feb 5, 2016

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

rasorbackq · Feb 5, 2016

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 · Feb 5, 2016

City Farmer said:
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 · Feb 5, 2016

PHPaul said:
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 · Feb 5, 2016

rasorbackq said:
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 · Feb 5, 2016

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.