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Featherman Equipment Co.

PO Box 62
Jamesport, MO 64648 (660) 684-6035 info@featherman.net

David Schafer
Founder

Amanda Bohannon
Office Manager

Abe Kurtz
Shop Manager

Testimonials

11/26/08

Hi, I just wanted to tell you how pleased I am with the Featherman Pro
plucker purchased from you last month.

I used it for the first time on the Thanksgiving turkeys and was amazed at the work it saved me!  These birds were Heritage type birds, probably around 15-20 pounds, and they were done one at a time.  In just a minute or two there was about five minutes of "clean up" work to do on each one, and that was that.  You'll laugh, but this is the first time in my life that I ever gutted a turkey that was still warm inside! The plucking was done that fast that the birds were still close to body temperature by the time I got them to the house and onto the kitchen counter for cleaning.

I'm someone who has for years "been going to get around to" building a Whiz-bang plucker, and just never did it. But because of that I was
reluctant to spend big money on a plucker of any kind when I knew I could build one myself and save some bucks.  Well, arthritis in my hands this year made the idea of plucking by hand anymore beyond me and I bit the bullet on the Featherman Pro.  This is one of those things that as soon as you use it the first thought is you wish you had gotten it years ago.   What a great machine!  Well, well worth the money.

Thanks so much!
Jennifer Lance

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9/26/08

Hi,

First off, let me tell you how thrilled I am with the plucker. WOW!!! I used to procrastinate butchering chickens because I knew what I was in for with hand plucking. I turned on the machine, put 4 birds in and watched in TOTAL amazement. WHA-HOOO! I love my new toy! I've never gotten them this clean by hand! Thanks for making a great product that an individual can use!!

Linda Medero

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8/03/08

Hi David,

Just to let you and Amanda know that Mary and I used my ‘Birthday present’, and all we can say is, WOW, WOW!!  It exceeded all expectations, in every way.  Your advertisements are way too soft.  The chickens came out actually, “squeaky clean”.  We only processed 9 broilers, this morning as a test run, to see if we actually wanted to make the “Featherman” available for rent to other growers here in Southwest Missouri.   I am happy to say that I am ready to start advertising that we have a full feather removal system available to take to the grower’s location.
Another satisfied customer,

Doyle Yoder

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David,

I just wanted to let you know about the picker we just got from you recently. We actually used it first on a 25lb turkey and I realized that there was a learning curve for me when using it for these big birds but it took all the hard work out with only a little cleanup after.We processed 30 chickens a few days later, and when we dropped 4 birds in to it after a very precise scald and switched it on for about 45 seconds, my wife Judy's mouth almost hit the ground. Those birds didn't have as much as a pinfeather on them. She was a little sceptical about investing in a picker, but not now. You have put a great time saving machine within the reach of small producers.
Thanks,

John Wrang

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Dear David,

Your featherman arrived safely here in NY and has seen a good bit of action so far. We really appreciate the quality of your product. I have recommended you to my chicken supplier, who has a hatchery in Pennsylvania and is considering going into processing as well. We even ordered extra chicks from him due to the ease of processing.

We are enjoying the book you enclosed as well. Thank you once again.

God Bless,
John & Mary Anne Smith - Maple Grove Farm - Putnam Station, NY

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Good Evening David,

I just finished eating the most delicious bowl of chicken soup from one of the hens that we processed this past weekend. We did a sort of test run on Sat. We have about 18 old layers that are headed for the soup pot this fall and winter, and we tried out our new Featherman and were thrilled with how well it worked. I have a knack for getting things not to work quite right, so I was a little nervous. But it was amazing. These are old hens, and I think that I ended up pulling maybe 3 pin feathers by hand! It made the morning go beautifully. The kids enjoyed it and got a good biology lesson. I had neither sore hands, sore back, nor sore attitude.Thanks for a fine machine.

Derek Greene

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After using the Featherman my (purchasing) partner and I will probably buy two machines because now I'm loathe to let it leave my property!

Ellen Barrosse, DE

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Dear David,
Thank you so much for your service to the small family farm! We are in our second year of pastured poultry production, and you have just what we needed!
We are extremely impressed with the Featherman Plucker – so much so that we convinced ourselves that the investment was worth it to get a scalder. Please send me one! You are offering a great service! Thanks!

Matt & Noelle Carroll, PA

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Dear Dave Schafer..
Before another day goes by I had to write and let you know "I love the Featherman PRO." WOW! I scalded the chicken (9 pounder)…threw that baby in there – 30 seconds later a perfectly plucked & sanitized chicken to eviscerate!!

I said "sanitized." I appreciate the clean product to eviscerate…The Featherman PRO took care of that job splendidly. Squeaky clean!

Thank you for providing a small farm a professional product to ease the hard job of processing chicken. I had a very busy week w/kids in sports, my dad was sick, and my husband on a business trip. Within a 3 hr. period 20 chickens processed and I can focus on the real job and eat home raised chicken. Thanks,

Liz & Dennis Hendon, WA

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We used the chicken cones for the first time this year, after 6 years of ‘jerry-rigging’ killing cones out of large plastic jugs. The convenience and time savings was fantastic! It was much less stressful for the chickens, which will result in better tasting meat for us as well as a more compassionate butcher for them. Both of these considerations are important to us. We highly recommend these cones. We waited so long because we produce meat primarily for our own household - but just one season has proved the cones to be a profitable investment for the small homesteader like us as well as the large producer.

Debbie & John, TX

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I’ve waited fifty years for this machine.

William Blackwood, NC

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Posted to the Whizbang chat group:

After months and months of mulling, hedging and hawing about wanting a whizbang style plucker I bought the plans, since I am in no way mechanically inclined enough to make one myself I handed the plans straight away to have my official contraption build to make the whizbang from stainless steel.

It is still in the works but will cost a bundle and take much longer than anyone thought (my builder is very busy plus wants the money up front to buy the parts, can’t blame him for that).

So in the mean time I decided I would purchase the Featherman from Schafer Farm as my chickens are growing fast plus I have a 4-H group full of kids with broiler and turkey projects that need to be taken care of.

I mailed a check to Schafer Farm for the Featherman.

10 days later I had a Fedex truck backing in with the fully assembled machine!!!

There was nothing to do but unwrap it, attach a garden hose to it and plug it in! For the non builder who needs a contraption builder otherwise, this was a great thing!

Today I gave it a test, since my next batch of broilers aren’t quite ready yet I picked 3 big old roosters that I have been planning on making soup from but dreaded pulling all those tough wing and tail feathers and fussing with all the dark red pin feathers (Rhode Island Roos) and truthfully would normally just cut their wings and tail off and skin old roos like these.

While setting up the Featherman I noticed it has a chute molded right into the plastic drum for rinse water and feathers to come out, I have a wire mesh type trash basket for the bathroom that fits in a bucket; put both basket and bucket under the chute to catch the nasties.

To give the Featherman a real work out I went with scald water directly from my hot water faucet, temperature about 125 to 130 which saves a little on the electric bill. (normally for old birds I would heat water on the electric stove in a big 3 gallon soup pot to get it hot enough to pull those feathers, but the bad thing is that hot temperature usually wrecks the skin as well)

So I dipped the birds only long enough for the feathers to be soaked down to the skin in the cooler water (today I count and dunk to about 7).

On the Featherman, turned on the water for the spray ring that is built onto the unit, turned on the spinner then dropped in all 3 roos. They bounced around and I bent down to make sure my mesh basket was in place, I was stunned at how fast the basket was filling with feathers, looked in the tub to see how everybody was doing and they were already nearly naked!!!

I left it run for about a minute, turned everything off, got the roos out. I’m not shy about saying here that the sounds of knocking and crackling and crunching were a little scary but….No broken skin or bones!

There were only a few wing feather left which pulled out easily, normally with hand plucking, these feathers are the toughest ones that need to be pulled with pliers on old birds, but all the bouncing had loosened them so much that they almost fell out - also with the tough tail feather nubs.

Pin feathers, there were maybe 10 total on all 3 birds collectively which again were very easy to remove considering the temperature of my scald was so low that the skin never lost its yellow.

In total I spent a half hour outside, this included setting everything up, killing, plucking, evisceration, grabbing a cup of coffee and cleaning up.

Not one fly or yellow jacket came to bug me, which normally would have me in fits by the time I hand plucked 3 birds.

Another benefit to the plucker, I used significantly less water than it takes while hand plucking. Usually I have the garden hose running the whole time I am out there plucking rinsing and washing hands, bird and table, sometimes 3 hours or more, gallons and gallons gone down on the ground. Today while plucking I used less than 3 gallons of water (that bucket with the wire basket caught almost every drop of it).

Also 99.9 percent less feather mess! All neatly deposited in the wire basket to be done with as you please!

All in all an extremely good experience and would recommend it to anyone thinking about getting one.

The only think I am sorry about is waiting so long to get it!! Oh about my SS project, I do not feel in such a rush to get it done anymore.

Kathy, (New Happy Camper!)

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The Featherman was fantastic. I thought it would work, but I never imagined it would work as well as it did.

Jeffrey Goodnight, MO

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We processed over 2,000 chukkars. You’ve never seen so many high fives.

Ron Mosley, TN

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