Plucker Pics!

To read more about this adventure, see this earlier post.

Saturday morning started out, well, typically... See what we have in the near-center of this picture? Yep, one kicked the bucket at the last minute.


Then I inspected the plucker. See the fancy way Hubby figured (well, *I* helped) to keep tension on the belt?

This is the center-lower portion of the plucker. This is what happens when the delivery man for the tool shop didn't show when he was supposed to. Instead of the 2x6s being aligned above one another and the bearings set over centered holes, Hubby offset them and used angle iron to make use of the bearings we *could* get. They were cheaper anyway.


Hubby was on-call, so we didn't want to get too deep into the project until evening, so he spent the day being all manly by installing a switch (a waterproof one at that) and playing with wires and his nifty electrician tools.

See? Manly:

The virgin plucker (this before the addition of extra fingers):

We set to work the automated-chicken-catchers. This one works well (please don't ask why the top of an alphabet table is sitting in my garden):



This one doesn't work so well yet, but it's cute, so we keep it around anyway:


They found creative ways to keep the chickens in place if Daddy wasn't ready to "hang up another one" yet. Organique enjoyed the closer look:

The not-so-virgin plucker, after the addition of the extra fingers:

Did it work? Did it? Huh? Huh?




Well, check it out:



Some people might not find this beautiful... They're probably the same ones who buy shoes more often than once a year and don't ask their husbands for pluckers as anniversary gifts:

These are the last 18 birds, representing approximately 97 pounds. Hubby brought it in the house in one load, without breaking my laundry basket.



And... these are the turkeys that day, a photo which I accidentally uploaded. They're already much bigger.


So - are you impressed? Excited? Thrilled? Probably not, and I can mostly understand that. But I'm tellin' ya; a plucker is an amazing thing.

I might give it a name.