Cornerstone Farm Ventures
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Cornerstone Farm Ventures Home of chickenpickers.com
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Duck Picking Helpful Hints Set your scalder for 145°F- 147°F degrees for 50 seconds. Do three 50 second cycles in the scalder. A wetting agent (aka liquid dishwashing detergent) is a necessity in the scalder. We recommend a detergent called Dawn because it is the strongest non commercial one you can find. You can't use too much! Use a 40 ounce bottle to process 80 ducks, adding more soap every time we scald new ducks. The detergent is necessary to break the surface tension of the water and allow it to penetrate the oily feathers of the duck. Set your plucker for 30 - 40 seconds. Then run through a plucker cycle with the rinse water turned off. (If the rinse water is on, it cools the birds too quickly and interferes with the removal process.) Put ducks back into the scalder for another 30 sec. Then put duck back into plucker and rinse this time with hot water. To get the best pluck, put as many ducks into your plucker as it will hold the rubbing action of duck against duck helps with feather removal. At this point, about 80% of the feathers should have been removed. To remove the rest, put the birds through one 50 sec scalder cycle followed by one picker cycle with the rinse water turned on. A duck's skin allows it to withstand multiple cycle process. It is imperative that the duck is placed in the plucker immediately after the scalder cycle ends, while it is still hot. Some ducks come out so clean they need almost no hand picking. Others require a modest amount of hand picking, perhaps up to 2 minutes a bird. The quicker you get to hand removing the remaining pin feathers from the second plucker cycle, the easier they will come out. We have also found that removing the feet before placing them in the plucker gives a better result, as the web feet can sometimes get hung up, preventing the ducks form tumbling properly. You may also want to wax the ducks at the end of the whole process. Dipping in wax helps to remove the pin feathers. The rest of the cleaning process is essentially the same as for broilers. When Hand Scalding and A Single Bird Plucker: Agitate very hard while in the scalder. Scald at 147° F for 2 ˝ min. Watch the feathers where the foot and leg join to tell when its done. Don't use any water in the plucker. Use Dawn dish detergent in the scalder water Some people have found they pick with no scalding at all (dry pick). They then scald and remove the remaining feathers. Others use the picker to rough feathers and then scald and pick as usual. Technique for ducks and geese will change according to species of the fowl, age, feed, killing method, temperature and time and other factors. Experimenting with wild fowl will find the best technique. |
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