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 Feath