MANUFACTURE AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF POULTRY PLUCKER SUITABLE FOR SMALL FARMS

Abstract

A study was carried out to manufacture and evaluate of a poultry feather plucking machine to select appropriate operational parameters. The performance evaluation tests were conducted under different factors such as, machine drum rotary speeds of 240, 340, 440 and 560 rpm (6.4, 9.07, 11.74 and 14.95 m/ sec.), scalding times of chicken of 30, 60 and 90 sec and number of machine fingers of 72, 90 and 108. The results show that, the highest average plucking efficiency of 91.4 % was obtainable with machine rotary speed of 240 rpm, scalding time of 30 seconds and number of machine fingers of 108. The lowest average was 43.73 % at the speed of 560 rpm and scalding time of 90 seconds. In general, the results revealed that, the machine plucking efficiency decreased with an increase in machine speed and scalding time. Generally it can be said that, the machine rotary speed, scalding time and number of machine fingers plays an important role in improving the de-feathering. The operationcost of thepoultry feather plucking machinewas 0.3 LE. kg /h, this means that, the operationcost for chicken ( 2 kg) was 0.6 LE., thepoultry feather plucking machine reduce 2.40 LE for each chicken as compared with the price of the operationcost of thepoultry feather plucking in the chicken ship.