DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF AN AUTOMATIC

DEFEATHERING MACHINE
BY
IBRAHIM AHMED USMAN
PGS/18-19/2/M/9294
M.ENG MACHINE DESIGN AND MECHATRONICS ENGINEERING
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
DEPARTMENT OF MECHATRONICS AND SYSTEM ENGINEERING
ABUBAKAR TAFAWA BALEWA UNIVERSITY BAUCHI
FEBRUARY ,2020
 INTRODUCTION
The most important step in bird processing before it reaches the
end product for cooking is defeathering of the bird. Defeathering
involves removing feathers from the slaughtered birds. Traditionally,
in this part of the world it is done manually by the use of hand after
it has been soaked in hot water for few minutes. This process results
in low output, time consuming, tedious, injury and could lead to
injury. In order to avoid all of these challenges, there is need to
design and construction an automatic defeathering machine from
locally sourced material.
 WHAT IS AUTOMATIC DE-FEATHERING?

 An Automatic defeathering is the removal of poultry feathers

by a programmable control plucking machine .That is why
this study intends to design and construct an automatic
poultry defeathering machine, that will reduce cost of
production, processing time, and ensure high production
output, which will lead to better hygiene and food safety
involved in poultry meat production.
 ISSUES WITH HAND/MANUAL DEFEATHERING !

 Time consuming.
 Lower output.
 High cost of production.
 Poor Hygiene.

The answer to these problems is AUTOMATION.

 PROBLEM STATEMENT
Most of the existing defeathering machines are manually operated
which lead to poor hygiene, lower production output, time consuming,
higher cost of production and easily expose to physical injuries like
burning of hand during scalding and tiredness of holding the poultry bird
during the plucking.
On the other hand, an automatic defeathering machine is controlled
automatically when the carcass is feed into the scalding chamber, it
then slammed and soften the carcass and untoward transferred the
scald bird automatically to the defeathering chamber and hence higher
production output, higher efficiency
And lack of exposure to burning by the boiling water during scalding.
Considering therefore the limitations with the existing defeathering, an
automatic defeathering machine have been proposed in this research.
 AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of the research work is to design and construct an

automatic defeathering machine.
The objective of the research work is:
To design and construct an automatic defeathering
machine that will reduce processing time, and ensure high
production output, which will lead to better hygiene and
food safety involved in poultry meat production.

 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The work will concentrate only on the design and

construction of the scalding and defeathering
chamber that will work together systematically.
 LITERATURE REVIEW
S/N AUTHOR WORK DONE LIMITATION
1. Chukwudi and Design of an Efficient Low Cost Poultry Feather Lack of automation
Ogunedu (2017). Plucker Machine. between the scalding
and the defeathering
chamber.

2. Omoniyi et al Bird Feather Removal Machine : Design and The design focused on
(2019). Development. improving the efficiency
of this existing feather
removal machine by
incorporating a boiling
unit.
3. Tanimola et al Design and Development of a De-Feathering The scalding chamber is
(2014). Machine. operating separately and
the defeathering
chamber too.

4. Carlos and Mauritius Design of blancher machine for processing of The skin of the chicken
(2016) chickens in the artesanal industry. undergo cooking at high
temperature.
 LITERATURE REVIEW CONT.
5. Adetola et al Investigation into mechanized de- Lack of automation
(2016). feathering process and optimal scalding between the scalding and
temperature of exotic and local birds in the defeathering
southwestern Nigeria. chamber.

6. Adeyinka (2015). Development and Performance Evaluation The carcass was manually
of a Chicken De-Feathering Machine for held during the scalding.
Small Scale Farmers .
 RESEARCH GAP

From the literatures viewed, it can be seen that the scalding chamber and the plucking chamber
are not systematically connected and no any programming software was used during the
research.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS

•
The plucker consists of a tub with a