Background: Like many small farms I know, I process my own birds under the state's small enterprise exemption. This year, I'm doing larger batches. Still Less than 250 birds total, but enough that I'm getting frustrated with my setup. I have a propane turkey fryer for scalding, and rent a whiz bang plucker from another farm. It's cheap, but I can only scald one bird at a time. And the burner has a timer that shuts it off after 15 minutes. I typically process alone. So I'm forced to set an alarm on my phone so I know when to reset the timer on the burner. And I waste time because I don't want to get caught doing something that requires both hands (the actual killing) and have the burner go out. The plucker works great. But I'm usually shoehorning in processing around the kids' needs and all the other farm chores. So I end up doing few a day over the course of several days. That's not going to work for a long term rental schedule. And the thing is horrendously heavy to move, and not big enough to do turkeys.

I'm considering buying a Featherman Turkey setup . Does anyone have one (or the Poultryman or similar)? At what processing volume does it make sense economically? I do get requests from other people for custom slaughtering services, so I figure that would be some extra money. But I don't want to splash out on something that would take 10 years to pay for itself.

And a processing question: I was taught to rest the carcasses at refrigeration temperature for a day or two. Usually people pack them into coolers on ice for that period. I recently helped a friend do some of his birds. He put them into his deep freeze immediately after processing. Is the time it takes the consumer to thaw out the bird enough to let rigor mortis pass? He's been doing it for years and sells a lot of chicken. So I assume it must work. It's just contrary to the way I've always seen it done. What do you think? It would be easier to freeze immediately, but I don't want to sell people meat that's too tough to chew.

We take our birds to an off-site facility to process, though we do the processing ourselves. The only rule about freezing that we have is that the birds have to have an internal body temp of 40 or less before we are allowed to package them. After that they are ok for freezing. Our main concern with freezing is that the internal temp is low enough. If they are put directly into the freezing from the scald water they run a risk of internal spoilage before any freezing actually takes effect.

It is best to pack the carcasses in ice for 24 hours to allow rigor to set in, then pass. Then package for the freezer. What Jerry says is true and perhaps allowing the birds to cool to 40f allows rigor, but I am not sure. What I do know is that birds placed in the freezer after the 24 hour packed in ice takes place, are more tender than those that are frozen right away.

The way that we process is that we use a state inspected Mobile Processing Unit. There are a couple of locations around the state where they can dock the unit, which comes with a killing area with scalder and plucker. A person is required to take a series of tests every other year to be considered a unit manager. This allows you to rent the unit for the day in order to process, and the chickens processed in an MPU are then the equivalent of USDA inspected but only for the state of Kentucky.We are not allowed to sell birds across state line. The regulations only require that I get carcasses below 40f in order to package them for sell. We tag the first bird to go into the ice water vat, and then check it with a thermometer inserted into the thickest point of the breast. The temperature is recorded and if it isn't 40 or below I have to check it again in another hour. If it still isn't below 40, something is wrong and corrective actions are taken. As soon as the carcass is chilled however, we can begin vacuum sealing. They then go back on ice in coolers for the trip home, about 1.5 hours, and then into the freezer. I recently found out that I could kill up to 2500 chickens at home and offer them for sale, so long as I don't take them off the farm but have customers come to my home to pick them up. I would probably be interested in this, as I have a lot of time and money invested driving chickens back and forth and hiring the required number of helpers to run the unit. With all the driving and hired labor, I don't make much on pastured chicken, but I believe if I did them at home by myself or with a neighbor or two helping I would come out much better.

As you have realized the scalder can put a stop in the work flow quite well. I use a homemade one that is able to maintain temp for the 4-5 hours it takes us to do 50 to 75 birds. It is made from a turkey burner without a timer and a couple NEW galvanized trash cans, it is a little ghetto but we only do a couple hundred birds a year so we could never justify the cost of a commercial scalder. We use a chest freezer as a chill tank, turn it on to keep the water below 40 degrees. I will keep the birds in the water bath for 24 hours which lets them pass rigor but also helps pull some of the extra blood that may not have drained well from the carcass, I like to change the water once as well.

We can do up to 5000 a year on our farm. We are only several hundred at this point, but business is good and growing fast. We started out as you described, and have gradually purchased more as business has grown. We are now almost where we want to be equipment wise.

We have the Featherman scalder and dunker, chicken plucker pro unit, and cones. Here's what we learned in our research, experience with it, and talking with Featherman:

-- the scalder is great on a nice day. On a cool or windy day, it can have a hard time keeping hot enough. Apparently this is a common problem with a larger scalder though, due to the exposed surface area. This can be easily remedied by wrapping the unit in insulating material and putting a cover on it.
-- the mechanized rolling dunker, although it looks great, only holds up to 25 lbs of bird. It won't do your average turkeys, and you may be left hand-scalding turkeys and larger chickens. As a result, we got the manual dunker and shackles unit, and love it. We recently did a batch of broilers that exploded in size unexpectedly. Birds averaged 7.5 lbs. We wouldn't have been able to use the mechanized dunker, but we used the manual one with no problem. It holds/dunks up to five 4-5 lb birds, we just put 3 of these big boys in the shackles and it still worked great. Perfect scald.
-- the plucker pro does up to 40 lbs of birds. That equates to roughly 4-6 chickens and 2 turkeys, depending on size. I think you would have to do a lot of turkeys to justify the larger unit. We are very happy with ours currently, but we do less than 100 turkeys a year. If we top 100, we might consider upgrading, only because we would also be doing a lot more chickens at that level.

In your case, it would be expensive, but you'd have to weigh that against the frustration you deal with. My husband and I together processed about 12 birds an hour with this setup. I wouldn't recommend killing, scalding, and plucking more than 3-5 birds at a time before they are dressed and chilled if you are working alone. If you have kids, this set up is a great way to involve them. My 4 year old can easily turn on the plucker switches, and an 8-10 year old can do the scalder. My 8 year old can do a really god job checking for leftover pin feathers. My 10 year old is also perfectly capable of the pricking to kill the chickens, so get those kids involved and speed your day up!

You can rent the equipment, but prices are generally low enough it will take a while to pay for it. Prices across the nation run about $50/day for the plucker or $75/day for the whole set up. Much more than that, and you won't be able to rent it out much. Featherman actually has a link on their website to folks renting their stuff if you want to try it all out first.

As far as tenderizing the chicken, we just keep ours in an ice water bath to chill quickly, and then they go in the freezer. I don't recommend my customers store in the fridge more than 24 hours, and even then, it must be on a wire rack. The risk of spoilage is just too great if it is stored improperly. With the price they pay for our birds ($3.50/lb), I don't want their bird to spoil and then they come back to me complaining we had a bad product, not to mention spoilage can make them sick. We age everything else, but none of our research has suggested aging the poultry. Just chilling well.

Hope that helps.

There could be a potential health/safety problem using galvanized cans as a scalding vat due to release of zinc fumes when heated, and even toxic levels of zinc could be absorbed by the poultry carcasses.

The guy I was helping who froze them right after processing does water chill them down to 40 degrees internally before freezing. He has a set-up with an old restaurant walk-in deep freeze. Once the birds are chilled and bagged, he puts them in. I'm curious, because everyone else ( myself included) chills them for 24 hours before freezing.

The only issue I have with going homemade is that I'm not particularly handy. I'm so busy right now with managing everything on the farm and going to the markets, etc. maybe in the winter when things are quieter I could try. After trying to get a mobile layer coop built and being out a good sum and no coop, I've sworn off hiring anyone to build anything for me. The disadvantage of being a single woman in the farm business is that a lot of men try to steamroll over me (their way is always better) or flat out rip me off. I'll pay more for a commercial set-up, but at least it will be here quickly and work the way it's supposed to for the $$$$$.

Billy Foster, you're right. The scalder is really disrupting my work flow. I've butchered 1000+ birds in my "career". I can work quickly as a "lone assassin." But the starting and stopping is a nightmare. At the very least, I'll have to look for a timer-less fryer at a yard sale or something. I don't think they make them that way anymore for liability issues.


Mptclinics - there's a 12 inch difference in the diameter if the Pro vs the Turkey plucker. If you have it and it's working, I'm encouraged. Both Cornerstone and Featherman told me that the 23 inch wasn't recommended for turkeys. I do find that having more than one bird in the plucker helps things along. Maybe that's what they were talking about? Does it do ok with one turkey in it? I have a touch of carpel tunnel from last year . And I'm a piano and voice teacher as well. So I really try to avoid hand-plucking.

I do have kids, but as a single parent, directing them often takes longer than the task would have taken me to finish it by myself. Lol. One of them really does get green around the gills at processing, too.

Poultryman's rotary scalder is truly a thing of beauty. Takes 10 good sized broilers at a time. But very, very expensive. I know Featherman makes a rotary insert now. I haven't seen it in person, but it doesn't look nearly as big. I'll probably go with the manual shackles, to be honest.

I took 5 fresh chickens with me yesterday, and sold out quickly. They ranged from 5.5-6 pounds and sold at $4.25 a pound. I can get $5.50 a pound wholesale for turkey, and $7.99 a pound from private customers. I'll see how it goes on Wednesday at the second market.

I borrow a scalder similar to the one Billy Foster posted. My neighbor made it and we pass it back and forth. He cut the top third out of a barrel, turned it over and welded it back in to make the tub, then cut a hole at the bottom for the fire, and another hole up a bit on the back for the flue. It's deep enough to scald chickens well, plus it holds 25 quart jars for water bath canning.

Bobby: I thought of that but one can buy a commercial scalder with a galvanized tank and I have seen a number of folks using new trash cans for scalding tanks so I figured the risk was minimal. I had the same concern as you indicated.
Catherine: the regulator I have had a timer on it but I removed it. I can’t remember exactly how I accomplished it but I remember having to “rig” the valve to stay open. I have since found another turkey burner without the timer on it, I think I bought it at Cabellas.

I watched featherman at Mother Earth News fair this spring. I don't know what models he demonstrated with. They ran two broilers per dunking basket. A turkey may be a squeeze. They plucked all 4 at the same time. 30 seconds. Joel Salatin was with him demonstrating. He said farm time to process 8 broilers from slit to gutted was 4 min for 8 chickens. I believe him. He was fast and smooth. That was with 2 people: one kills, dunks and spins, the other butchers.

Have you looked at the Whizbang chicken plucker designs?
http://whizbangplucker.blogspot.com/
Looks easy enough to me. Feathermans stuff is great but man! Expensive!

I'll check Cabella's! I've often wondered about the galvanization as I've had the idea of doing a scalder from a can. My father is a chemist and has put the fear of god into me about heating it, lol.

The plucker I'm renting is a whiz bang. Works nicely. I just can't see having the time to make something in the next week or so. Maybe if it was the winter and things were slower. But I am running around doing the job of 2-3 people at the moment. The guy who I'm renting it from is way more mechanically inclined than I am, and it still cost $700 to build and several solid days of work. And his wife is a SAHM that takes care of everything else so he can schedule that kind of out of the ordinary project in.

we started with renting a whizbang ( after hand plucking for 2 years). I found the difference incredible! With the whizbang, legs and wings seemed to constantly get stuck and broken, feathers were everywhere, and the number of birds it could do was very limited. The Featherman very rarely gets stuck, rarely breaks or dislocates anything, and the feathers all spit out the back into a tidy pile.

I talked to Featherman at length about the differences in pluckers. It's really based on weight. It says up to 40 lbs, but we tend to keep ours around 30-35. It seems like more than 4 chickens get tangled together and jam a bit. We have done 2 smaller (under 15 lb) turkeys with success, but they seem to tangle whose with multiples. The downside of doing 1 turkey is that it leaves a few extra pin feathers due to not bumping into each other.

As far as pin feathers, we got a fish-skin remover, and it pops them right out. There aren't nearly as many as with the whizbang though. Hope that helps.

Oh, there is a farmer is Swoope, VA, named Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. He has the entire Featherman setup, and processes several times a month. Folks are welcome to go out and watch, so you could see his whole process in action. Just a thought.

Yeah. He's pretty famous. Worth going to take a look at his farm at some point, but I can barely make it to the grocery store and I've rescheduled the dentist 5 times since the markets started! Lol.

I've processed as part of a team many times, mostly on the featherman setup. Twice on a Poultryman. I'm good at working them, although there's always tricks one can pick up from watching others. I was more wondering, for the people that own a setup, at what # of birds a year did it make economical sense? I'm planning to order the 23 inch plucker today. The guy with the rental is clamering for it back. Best case scenario, the plucker will pay for itself in 5 weeks. Worst case, about 8.

I think you'll like it. Remember, though, that the key to even the best plucker is a good scald. I believe (as a homeschooling mom to 5 ) that we also have to put a value on our time. Between the value of time saved doing our own processing, the money made in rentals, and the money made in chicken, it can easily pay for itself in the first year, depending on how many chickens and/or how many rentals.