House of Raeford Farms, Inc., headquartered in Rose Hill, NC, is a family owned, fully integrated poultry company with processing facilities located throughout the southeastern United States. One of their poultry processing facilities, Columbia Farms is located in Greenville, SC, and processes 11,000 large broilers per hour for deboning.
In order to improve their yields and overall plucking performance, Columbia Farms decided to replace their existing 6-inch defeathering line by a new 8-inch 11,000 birds per hour Meyn line. The newly installed line consists of a Quest waterbath stunner, jet stream scalder, four JM64 pluckers, one JMD2 plucker, new tail feather puller, hock plucker as well as two rehangers from slaughtering to evisceration. The rehangers hang the birds from the 8-inch slaughtering line to two 6-inch evisceration lines, which is the first of its kind in the United States.
Mr Luke Brewer, plant manager says, “We are very happy with the results of the new defeathering line. Over-scalding of the birds has been completely eliminated; both whole griller and boneless breast yields have increased; and quality checks confirm improved feather removal.”
