Chicken Plucker Man, Part 1

Lately people have been calling me the Chicken-Plucker Man, which is ironic because I've never plucked the feathers off a chicken in my life.

But I did build a mechanical chicken plucker machine. Seriously. Then I posted a video of it to Facebook for all the world to see. Following that, I'd run into people at church or wherever, and they'd immediately say, "That video was awesome!" And we'd talk about how the plucker works and how I built it.  I got an email (from someone I've never met) who said, "I saw your video on facebook; my mom raised chickens, and she would have loved to own a machine like that." And so it went, conversations after conversation.

Lots of folks were intrigued. And I got a lot of questions: "Do the chickens have to be dead first?" "How come you don't cut the heads off?" "Can you do more than one at a time?" With all this interest, I thought I'd try to answer some questions, explain how I built the plucker, and give you a glimpse into the fun I had in the process.

First, just in case you missed it, here's the original video I posted to facebook:

Let's me just say this: A mechanical chicken plucker is really not that big a deal. People eat a lot of chicken. Think of the restaurant chains devoted to chicken: KFC, Chic-fil-a, Pop-eyes, Pollo Loco, etc.) There are big name chicken producers carried by every grocery: Perdue, Tyson, etc. All that chicken means a lot of feathers are being removed from a lot of birds. And believer me, it's not being done by hand.

The commercial machines operate on the same principle as the one I built. The birds spin round and round in a tub while rubber "fingers" pull the feathers off. It's that simple. (And yes, they are dead before entering the plucker.)

I suppose all the intrigue with the plucking machine is due to the fact that many of us have lost touch with the reality raising chickens for food. We forget about all the steps that lead up to the appearance of  that plump and neatly packaged Oven-Stuffer Roaster in the grocery store cooler. Yes, that used to be a living creature, and with feathers!  And those feathers were removed by a machine much like the one in the video.

 Here's a shot of some of those creatures doing what they do best. Eating!

These fellas should be ready for the plucker in a few weeks. Chicken-Plucker Man will be ready!

By the way, I did not design the plucking machine. I built it by closely following the plans. I'll tell you all about it, and walk you through it step by step in my next blog post. And if you have questions, let me know. I'll try to answer them.

Plucking a chicken can be a tedious job. It'll be a whole lot easier, though, with the new plucking machine.

Eat up, me hearties!