Butchering week #2
Test driving the chicken plucker, aka the chicken mutilater
Our fellow chicken farmer and good friend loaned us her automatic chicken plucker, to help with the de-feathering process. The plucking is, by far, the most time-consuming part of the entire chicken processing. The steps involved in the process are
Kill them by cutting the jugular.
Drain the blood.
Cut the head off.
Scald them for 30 sec.
Douse with cold water.
Pull out all the feathers.
Remove all the insides.
Clean them up.
Weigh them.
Bag and label.
Anything that will shorten the process is welcome.
The "plucker" was not a set of robotic hands that gently pulled out feathers. No, it was a series of fat rubber fingers that rotated. You hold the chicken against the rotating rubber sticks, they slap the chicken, and the feathers are supposed to be rubbed off by the "fingers." Hmmm... Yes, some feathers were rubbed off, lots of skin was rubbed off, and some of the beautiful chicken meat was chewed up. Ouch! Mark that chicken "for home consumption only!" We are back to hand-plucking!
I was wondering about those chicken pluckers. I hand pluck my birds too, but now that my hands are getting a bit arthritic, I was considering a feather plucker. Sounds like I'd need to be very careful about the scalding process. Since I do it by guess work, the plucker may not be for me. I suppose that I could invest in a thermometer but it hardy seems worthwhile. I only process one bird at a time.
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