Well, I bought me one of these chicken plucking machines the other day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMydVdwmuwsDiscovered that they work a whole lot better if the chicken is deceased first ......
My ol’ man was a cotton pickin’ finger lickin’ chicken plucker.
Whad’ya think about that?
Wish my mom and grandmother had one of those 60 years ago.
Pluck and tenderize at the same time
Just watched this video. Almost makes me want to raise my own chickens now.
I used a homemade one for years that I rigged up on a Shopsmith. Mine had the fingers on the outside so you held the bird up against it. it worked very well.
We took birds to a small family run poiltry business.
They raised turkeys and chickens they marketed, and used
their shop to custom butcher.
It was amazing. Coming from using a feed bag to hold them while
a hatchet shortened them up. Scale, handpluck, since with a paper bag.
6 kill cones, trough to catch the blood.
A scalder that lowered a half dozen at a time into the water,
rotated them a couple times and lifted, automatically.
A much bigger version of that machine plucked them all at once.
When they opened the door and 6 bare nekkid birds rolled out,
I laughed my 12 year old butt off.
An older couple ran it, he got them dead and nekkid,, then pushed them
across a stainless line to another room. His wife did the knife work.
It didn't take long to do 50 chickens, and she wasn't far behind him.
They are out of it now, but about 10 years ago I think it was pushing $2/bird.
On one hand, that's dirt cheap. Compared to DIY.
On the other its 1/3 the cost of a ready to go store bird. No work/wait/ feed required.