Development of Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) Defeathering Machine

Abstract

Because of the increased demand of chicken meat, the non-vegetarians worldwide has imposed big responsibility on poultry chicken processing industry. The chicken defeathering machines were made with different capacities but they still need of improvement. This paper is focused on the fabrication of a drum type small scale chicken defeathering machine. The drum type chicken defeathering machine was made using locally available materials. Design calculations were done to ensure appropriate shaft diameter supporting the rotating plate as this could affect the efficiency of the machine.  The drum of the machine was made detachable and inside of it was the riveted ring on drum surface located above rotating plate. In addition to this, the machine was designed with chute that is made of two layers to separate the removal of feathers and waste water. Handle and wheel caster were included for ease handling and transport from one place to another place. The machine was tested using 28 days old broiler chicken. The machine was designed based on the identified problems on existing machine available from three local Dressing Plants namely Poultry Processing Plant in Municipality of Talavera, Nueva Ecija, Poultry Processing Plant in Barangay St. Nino, San Jose, Nueva Ecija and Poultry Processing Plant in Barangay Canitoan, Cagayan de Oro City. The identified problems of these existing machines were a) 10 percent of the chicken feathers was not removed, b) in a batch of 15 chicken, 2 pcs had broken legs; c) during the defeathering operation, workers have to pour manually 2 buckets (20-li capacity) of water, 3 d) unloading consumes about 60 seconds, and e) removing the feathers from the machine after operation was quite difficult. The overall dimension of chicken defeathering machine after fabrication is 1250 mm x 1160 mm x 650 mm and with a weight of 95 kg. The machine was designed to a capacity of 800 heads per hour. The performance evaluation of the machine has defeathering efficiency of 99.01% and defeathering efficacy of 95.85% at angular speed of 348 rpm.  Thus, in this study, a small chicken defeathering machine was developed by improving its performance based on the problems identified above so as to make it more useful and adaptable by small scale poultry processors and poultry farmers who wish to have an added income from a dressed chicken over a live chicken.