The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Feather Plucking Fun

Yesterday was a very educational afternoon for me. It was the second time this year that I got to see first hand how a chicken goes from happy clucking to all plucked out in a matter of minutes. I had my trusty video camera going part of the time and managed to capture several of the steps in this rather detailed process.

I've decided to share two of those steps with you in this short video clip.Plymouth Rock

I really enjoy a good chicken dinner, and I already feel more connected to my personal link of the food chain thanks to this experience. I owe a debt of gratitude to our friends for sharing their clever set up and operation with us. I was especially impressed with the powerful chicken plucker they built which is featured in the video clip above.

We have talked about taking the rest of the chicken footage and putting together an instructional video for those who need to know more. Stayed tuned for more information on that.

The chicken pictured is one of our Plymouth Rock cousins, and she was not harmed during the making of this post and will most likely live out a life of leisure here on the farm with a few of her egg laying sisters.

Read other posts about killing and eating your own chickens:



Our chicken innovations have also included a homemade chicken waterer.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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plucking
i would love to know what that tub was to pluck the feathers and how do you make it?
Comment by paula — Wed Dec 24 20:21:50 2008
comment 2
It's a Whiz Bang chicken plucker --- http://www.thedeliberateagrarian.com/whizbang/. They sell the plan for $19.95, but everyone I've talked to said that it costs several hundred dollars to a thousand dollars to make. We don't have one of our own yet! It is fast and easy, but probably only worth your while if you pluck lots of chickens.
Comment by anna — Wed Dec 24 21:18:24 2008
chicken plucking
in southern spain they pluck homegrown chickens DRY. the heart,gizzard etc..is drawn and the chicken is wiped with a clean napkin.this ensures that none of the flavour is lost.there is a notable difference in tastefrom the chicken which gets rinsed out.
Comment by islero — Sun Sep 11 11:52:45 2011
Dry plucking chickens
It's intriguing you should say that since we were just processing chickens last week, and I was wondering how it would work dry. True, it would be tougher to get out the big feathers of the tail and wings dry since the heat of the water loosens the feathers, but wet feathers wouldn't stick to your hands, which might make the whole process faster. Maybe I'll try dry plucking on some of our next batch.
Comment by anna — Sun Sep 11 12:29:29 2011
Whiz Bang !!
I've started assembling our whiz bang plucker today. This weekend, hopefully, we will be able to have the first test run.
Comment by Heath — Wed Oct 17 21:27:31 2012
Whiz bang chicken plucker
Heath --- Fun! You'll have to report back on what you think of the new technology. Also, I'd be curious to hear how much it cost with materials.
Comment by anna — Thu Oct 18 08:34:09 2012
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