Wet or dry

[dad]

can anybody tell me the for or against wet or dry pluckers for game i am thinking of buying one

[Old farrier]

Got a wet plucker in the shed if you decide on one 

can’t advise on it as I’ve never used it 

I’m sure there’s pros and cons for both 

all the best 

of 

[Benthejockey]

Go for a dry plucker. They're more expensive but less risk of damaging a bird, you don't need to buy a boiler as well and you're not dealing with wet feathers everywhere. Some even blow the feathers straight into a bag. If I ever get more than 40p to my name I'm going to get a dry plucker. 

[lancer425]

Another vote for DRY. i had a ECHO wet plucker for  years it was too much messing around, so it ended up just sat gathering dust.

I sold it at Brig auctions.   One day on a car boot sale near louth i saw a Bingham dry plucker, i took his hand off at £70 , and can only say its the best £70 i ever spent. DRY in my opinion.

[Benthejockey]

47 minutes ago, lancer425 said:

Another vote for DRY. i had a ECHO wet plucker for  years it was too much messing around, so it ended up just sat gathering dust.

I sold it at Brig auctions.   One day on a car boot sale near louth i saw a Bingham dry plucker, i took his hand off at £70 , and can only say its the best £70 i ever spent. DRY in my opinion.

£70 😭😭😭 I can't even find one for 5 times that!!!! My fingers have just about recovered from the bloody wing feathers now! I did 19 by hand. Killed the first one on Tuesday afternoon and dressed the last one last night.

[lancer425]

25 minutes ago, Benthejockey said:

£70 😭😭😭 I can't even find one for 5 times that!!!! My fingers have just about recovered from the bloody wing feathers now! I did 19 by hand. Killed the first one on Tuesday afternoon and dressed the last one last night.

Hard work, when the kids were small i used to do 24 Turkeys every year the stupid things used to kill one another now and again but i ended up with all 24 or some years 22/23.

 Mobbing was the thing, a blob of dirt on a neck or feather out of place anything different they just mobbed the deviant bird.

I sold every one every year, not sure now with supermarket birds being nearly free, probably hard work for little return.

But my heart goes out to you sneezing that taste in your throat, and those bags of feathers splitting in the back of the estate car at the tip. Good luck and happy days. I might buy a couple off the heat  next october get them on for christmass just for us nothing like fresh turkey. .

 

[Benthejockey]

Most I ever did was 30 one Xmas and 10 geese but fortunately I had help. It's quite lucrative still. I sold every single one bar 4 which were Xmas presents. I charged £3.75/lb and people snapped my hand off. I did reduce the price on a couple which were over 30lbs dressed! I had trouble one day when they knocked the feeder over and decided to try and eat each other instead! And I had them a fortnight earlier which is why they got so big but it also meant the 3 stags, that got chucked in by mistake by Cyril Bason, got randy and a couple had scratches on their backs. I stand in a jumbo bag and pluck straight in to it.

On my wanted list is a dry plucker and a small chiller room!

[lancer425]

I will give it a go again next year was going too just for us, but if people will still buy them i will buy a few more i think 8 or 10  should be enough without fear of being left with any.  I have a shed i can use handy.

Edited December 23, 2019 by lancer425

[figgy]

Fella I used to shoot with had his own poultry farm and I asked him about plucking machines.

He swore wet was best, put the birds in the hot water for X amount of time then into the plucker.

No damage and totally clean. He had a couple of them. Did have a dry plucker that he didn't use or his helpers didn't either, kept just in case others broke..

I don't know the makes but he did say they were expensive.

Edited December 24, 2019 by figgy

[bornfree]

scalding and wet plucking removes the outer layer of skin so you must bag the bird after chilling and gutting or it will go brown when it drys out. dry plucking is fine for chickens and turkeys but for ducks and geese you need a wax dip and strip to remove the down.

[lancer425]

6 hours ago, bornfree said:

scalding and wet plucking removes the outer layer of skin so you must bag the bird after chilling and gutting or it will go brown when it drys out. dry plucking is fine for chickens and turkeys but for ducks and geese you need a wax dip and strip to remove the down.

Correct and why i found the wet pluckers too much messing around, the dry one i have now is a Bingham and its good , i pull flights and secondariness/tails on ducks &Geese and it gets the bulk done fine the down you can just Finnish with a heat gun or blow lamp, all i do for birds i do not chose to crown or  just breast out.

[bornfree]

6 hours ago, lancer425 said:

Correct and why i found the wet pluckers too much messing around, the dry one i have now is a Bingham and its good , i pull flights and secondariness/tails on ducks &Geese and it gets the bulk done fine the down you can just Finnish with a heat gun or blow lamp, all i do for birds i do not chose to crown or  just breast out.

Iam no expert on any other subject but after working for nearly 40 year's in  duck and goose processing I do know a little about plucking them. We used to run 5 Bingham pluckers doing 1600 ducks a day between them. And finished up doing 40,000 a day with online wet pluckers and double wax dip with automatic wax stripper's.

[Benthejockey]

40000 a day 😱 that's some amount of crispy duck! On a large commercial scale wet definitely blows dry out of the water. Scald them, chuck them in and a minute or two later they're done compared to having to hold them up to a plucking machine and do them dry. But on a small to medium scale dry is definitely the way to go. The Bingham plucker blow straight into a bag, there's no scalder or running water to factor in and as Bornfree says you can average 1400 a day.