Cody Williams
Well-known member
Hey guys, after years of talking and thinking about it I finally decided to build a home bird plucking system. Besides being avid bird and waterfowl hunters my family raises and processes between 20-30 meat chickens a year so we end up doing a ton of bird plucking, a lot of times I just take the breasts and legs of my ducks but having a nice fat bird to roast is really nice. This usually involves hand plucking the bird and singing off the pinfeathers, this takes me about a half hour for a duck and usually an hour or so for a goose.
I looked around online and found a bird plucking drum that fits into a power drill, I bought that and also bought a cheap Harbor Freight variable speed drill for about $30. I built a frame for the drill and wired a switch into the power cord, and attached the drill to the frame by pulling the screws out of the drill body and using some burly exterior screws through the holes to attach the drill to the frame, and I made up an L bracket and bolted it into the threaded hole for the drill handle.
Here's a closeup of the drill handle, notice the high tech speed control
.
I bought a cheap folding table and cut a hole in it to fit over a trash can, after a few trial runs I used some spare plexiglass and plywood I had to make a hood to cover everything. I wear my woodworking apron and a hooded jacket and use my body to block the opening, it seems like about 90% of the feathers go into the trash can. Definitely and outside job!
Here's a group of birds I plucked this morning, I had a teal, pintail, pair of mallards, and a bluebill and I figured that was a good mix of birds to try out this thing's capabilities. I snip off the feet and the wings at the elbow joint, no pre-plucking is necessary, this thing takes them down to bare skin in a heartbeat! I found a big duck takes 4-5 minutes to do, quite an improvement over doing it by hand! It took me probably 45 minutes start to finish to have all 5 ducks plucked, gutted, and ready to age, not bad at all! Only thing I've found to be careful about is that if the birds have shot holes in their skin the plucker can grab them and tear the skin as you can see on one of the mallards, but other than that it works like a charm.
I looked around online and found a bird plucking drum that fits into a power drill, I bought that and also bought a cheap Harbor Freight variable speed drill for about $30. I built a frame for the drill and wired a switch into the power cord, and attached the drill to the frame by pulling the screws out of the drill body and using some burly exterior screws through the holes to attach the drill to the frame, and I made up an L bracket and bolted it into the threaded hole for the drill handle.
Here's a closeup of the drill handle, notice the high tech speed control
.
I bought a cheap folding table and cut a hole in it to fit over a trash can, after a few trial runs I used some spare plexiglass and plywood I had to make a hood to cover everything. I wear my woodworking apron and a hooded jacket and use my body to block the opening, it seems like about 90% of the feathers go into the trash can. Definitely and outside job!
Here's a group of birds I plucked this morning, I had a teal, pintail, pair of mallards, and a bluebill and I figured that was a good mix of birds to try out this thing's capabilities. I snip off the feet and the wings at the elbow joint, no pre-plucking is necessary, this thing takes them down to bare skin in a heartbeat! I found a big duck takes 4-5 minutes to do, quite an improvement over doing it by hand! It took me probably 45 minutes start to finish to have all 5 ducks plucked, gutted, and ready to age, not bad at all! Only thing I've found to be careful about is that if the birds have shot holes in their skin the plucker can grab them and tear the skin as you can see on one of the mallards, but other than that it works like a charm.
