Duck plucker???

[June2012]

Erm, I hope this is the right place. If not, I'm so very sorry!!

I'm thinking about ducks for self-sustainability, but I haven't found many pluckers for DUCKS. Just the DIY Whizbang which is out of my budget at 200 bucks that is mostly for chickens than ducks. (If I have a duck plucker, I don't doubt it's ability to work on chickens!) So, I found this thing called the FowlPlucker... It sounds awesome, but I really don't want to be spending too much. My operation is going to be small with a few ducks harvested a year. I'm thinking about making a DIY drill powered duck plucker, but the fingers will be from FowlPlucker. I'm also looking into geese, quail, and perhaps some pigeons down the line! Would this idea work?? Anyone else think that this might work, or made their own DUCK plucker before? Geese plucker works too, but if it works for the other, I'm sure it'd work either way.

 

[ralph a]

It takes a fair bit of power for a plucker to work .I don't believe a drill would be strong enough or fast enough . Mine is a home made one with the fingers on a small drum of about 8 inches and it has a quarter hp motor on it and its all it will do is pluck a large duck . If i hold the bird and move it and slowly it does do a far job on the large ducks . But smaller ducks and chickens do very well on it . But it does not pluck pigeon well . It beats the crap out of them. They are to small and to soft skinned . Any plucker you make on your own in your back yard cheaply will not work like what you buy of the shelf. But if it will take of 90 percent of the feathers on a duck i call it a winner . It may take a few birds and few adjustments but do give up .

 

[June2012]

It takes a fair bit of power for a plucker to work .I don't believe a drill would be strong enough or fast enough . Mine is a home made one with the fingers on a small drum of about 8 inches and it has a quarter hp motor on it and its all it will do is pluck a large duck . If i hold the bird and move it and slowly it does do a far job on the large ducks . But smaller ducks and chickens do very well on it . But it does not pluck pigeon well . It beats the crap out of them. They are to small and to soft skinned . Any plucker you make on your own in your back yard cheaply will not work like what you buy of the shelf. But if it will take of 90 percent of the feathers on a duck i call it a winner . It may take a few birds and few adjustments but do give up .

Hmmm.. The FowlPlucker DIY kit is expensive enough at 170 or 180 USD. The motor, I think, is 6 horse power and it cleans poultry like a breeze. I'm wondering where I could get a motor like that somewhere... And I don't mind taking it slow, but I do NOT want to be plucking something for 40 minutes! However, I don't mind taking out some stubborn feathers with good ol' rubber gloves.

Do you have a DIY on it? I'd love to lookat it, or even try it out myself...

Looks like I'll just hand pluck those pigeons! =)