Troubleshooting Turkey Processing: Is It Possible to Get a Clean Pluck? PPT096 Pastured Poultry Talk

This is an edited version of the article I published in Issue 113 of the APPPA Grit, which was based on the conversation in this podcast. Not a member of APPPA? Go check them out.
Last fall, I had the pleasure of consulting with a producer on some questions about his farm’s turkey processing procedure. Since turkey processing season 2019 is fast approaching, I wanted to share some highlights of that conversation in this podcast. One of the biggest challenges with the turkey processing was the amount of hand plucking required to finish the birds. The hand plucking went anywhere from five to ten minutes extra. The natural question becomes, "can I pluck the turkeys clean like I do with chickens?" I had this same conversation with a different person recently, so I know it’s a relatively common question. The first place to troubleshoot this type of problem is the scalder.
The farm I was talking to was scalding and plucking four turkeys that dressed between 16 and 20 pounds in a Poultry Man 41” scalder and a Featherman XL plucker. Due to problems with the turkeys catching in the rotating platform of the scalder, the farm was manually dunking 4 turkeys in the rotary scalder (the platform was stationary and vertical). Then in the plucker, the birds were getting jammed up. One person actually had to man the plucker.
Maintain Water Temperature and Level When scalding anything, it helps to ensure your scalder maintains the water temperature as you process. My scalder has one 65,000 BTU burner, and for turkeys, I need to heat supplemental water because I can process turkeys faster than the water recovers. The temperature recovery problem is compounded because the turkeys remove a lot of water from the scalder, so it’s not just heating up water that has cooled ten degrees, it’s heating up larger quantities of cold water. In addition to maintaining temperature, make sure you keep the water level full.
Stop Dunking Birds Up and Down For the processors using a manual scalding approach, the first piece of advice I always give is to stop dunking birds up and down. This enables a bad scald. Basically, the breast gets more scald than the legs and thighs, so it’s uneven.
If you are manually scalding, try dropping the birds into the scald water and then stir them like soup. Test your scald early and often because the birds will scald faster with this approach, but they will be  consistent. Plucking will be a pleasure, even by hand. This process works for heritage birds, too. I remember processing at a farm in North Carolina a few Thanksgivings ago; I ran the manual scalder and there was no dunking involved, and my back was appreciative.
If you’re using a rotary scalder, there’s no reason to hand dunk. Adjust the volume of birds to flow through the system efficiently. In the case of rotary scalders, you can often increase your throughput by scalding birds on both sides of the rotating rack.
Remove Feet and Point Necks In On the scalder, I recommend taking the feet off the turkeys prior to scalding (which the farm was doing) and loading the turkeys so that the necks point into the center of the tank, not the sides. Sometimes with scalders that have a gap between the rotating platform and the sides of the scalder, the long turkey necks find a way to slide into that gap.
Add the Right Number of Birds to the Plucker The goal of the plucker is to have enough birds so that they tumble against each other; otherwise, the plucking requires a human hand to make the birds tumble or the feathers won’t pick off. However, there is often another problem we don’t think about in the plucker, and that’s too many birds.  My recommendation during the podcast was was to put three turkeys into that 32" diameter plucker instead of four. This gives the birds room to go around the drum and still tumble into each other.
I had the pleasure of the hearing back from the farm after their 2018 turkey processing, and the tips I shared greatly