Automatic Poultry Slaughter Equipment and Processing Line Systems
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Poultry slaughter is carried out with a dedicated automatic slaughtering machine that lines up the birds, severs the necks, and feeds the carcasses onward through the processing line. 
Each conveyor of the lifting mechanism is driven by its own individual drive and is mounted beneath the main conveyor at the level of the hanger leads. The horizontal component of the conveyors' travel speed equals the speed of the conveyor carrying the hangers with the birds and of the head-feed mechanism chains, keeping all elements synchronised.
The head-feed mechanism is built as two closed chains fitted with special grippers and positioned horizontally at the level of the bird's neck. Each of these chains runs on sprockets mounted on plates, and the plates can be swung apart to give access to the knife unit and make the machine easier to service.
The gap between the chains is set with a screw mechanism. The knife unit consists of two disc knives and an eccentric lifting device that allows the vertical distance between the knives and the grippers of the head-transport mechanism to be adjusted.
The disc knives are set with overlapping edges, sharpened around the outer diameter, and provided with radial grooves that help draw the heads in. The machine frame carries a screw mechanism by which the whole unit is raised or lowered.
How are poultry carcasses processed after stunning?
After electrical stunning, the birds are fed by conveyor to the slaughtering machine. The hanger lead is caught by the conveyors of the lifting mechanism, and the bird's neck enters the gap between the chains of the head-transport mechanism.
The lifting mechanism raises the hanger with the bird vertically until the head is pressed against the lower edge of the transporting chains, fixing it firmly in position.
As the bird's neck is drawn upward, folds of feathered skin gather above the chains. This increases the reliability with which the head is held at the correct height without obstructing the cut, which is made at the level of the bird's eyes.
How is slaughtered poultry given heat treatment?
To heat-treat the entire surface of the slaughtered bird with hot water, scalding units fitted with axial pumps of the K7–FTsL–6/5 type are used. These pumps draw water from inside the unit and lift it through pockets into the upper part of the apparatus.
The water then spills over in a strong cascade that holds the slaughtered bird submerged and ensures heat penetrates quickly to the skin. This even scalding is what loosens the feathers for the plucking stage that follows.
The scalding units can be single-pass, in which the carcasses are moved by conveyor along the unit and pass under a two-sided water cascade, or double-pass, in which each carcass is carried twice along the length of the unit and exposed to a one-sided water cascade.
During operation, some water is carried out of the unit with the carcasses. To maintain the working water level, the cold-water valve is left slightly open in all such units. These unified units can be single-, double-, or triple-section, the number of sections depending on the line's throughput.
A triple-section unit comprises a turning section, two middle sections, a steam line, a foam suppressor, and an axial pump. The body of the turning section has one end wall and two longitudinal walls; the end wall contains a hatch for cleaning the unit, and each longitudinal wall has a cut-out window with an attached pocket.
The window is closed by a grating. The middle sections are identical in construction to the turning section but have no end walls.
The steam line is a system of pipes whose ends, fitted with silent heaters, are placed inside the unit. Steam supplied through the pipes enters the water and heats it.
The foam suppressor is a chamber with a corrugated grating; in addition, the foam-suppressor chamber forms one wall of a middle section. The axial pumps consist of an impeller, a shaft, and bearing assemblies.
A V-belt drive pulley is fitted to the output end of the shaft. The pump is driven by electric motors through a V-belt transmission enclosed by a guard. 
Two pumps are installed in each section. The water temperature in the unit is held at the set level by an automatic control system.
How are feathers removed from hens with a flail machine?
A machine with semi-oval flails is used to remove feathers from hens and broiler chickens, and also to inspect and wash the carcasses of hens and broiler chickens. It is a workhorse of the plucking stage on automated poultry lines.
The machine consists of two separate housings, four supports, two width-adjustment mechanisms, two working drums, and two drives. 
The housings of the machine are joined by the width-adjustment mechanism, and both housings rest on four supports. Each support consists of an outer and an inner tube: the outer tube moves relative to the inner one, while the inner tube ends in a round shoe for standing on the workshop floor.
Inside the tubes are a lifting screw with a nut and a worm gear pair for driving the screw. The width-adjustment mechanism consists of a horizontal tube with four slots each 400 mm long, with guide bushings fitted over the tube on top.
Two nuts are screwed onto the screw, each having threaded holes in their sides. A bolt is screwed into each hole, passing through a slot in the tube and a hole in the guide bushing. When the screw is turned by the handle, the nuts move horizontally, carrying the guide bushings — and with them the machine housings, which are fixed to the bushings by special bolts.
The working drum is a shaft with cross-pieces set on it every 400 mm. To these cross-pieces are fixed grooved plates with holes for mounting the flails, which sit on the drum surface, and grooved plates without holes, which close the side openings between the cross-pieces.
The flails consist of a working part and a head with an annular groove for fastening in the drum. They are pushed into the openings of the working drum and drawn in up to the head groove. They are arranged in eight rows around the drum surface, and along the drum's length they run from larger, through medium, to small.
In the inspection machine all the flails are small. The design of the working drum and the flail head allows quick and easy replacement of flails without dismantling the drum. The drum drive consists of an electric motor and a V-belt transmission.
The machine is installed beneath the overhead conveyor line, strictly along its centre. When adjusting it, the flails must achieve the greatest possible wrap-around of the bird being processed.
How are feathers removed from slaughtered hens with a disc machine?
The disc machine is designed for removing feathers from slaughtered hens, chickens, and ducks. It consists of two housings, movably joined and mounted on height- and width-adjustable supports of the same construction as those used in the semi-oval-flail machines.
The machine has five disc rows — four of them (the side rows) housed in the casings and one (the middle row) on the supporting part of the machine. All disc rows are identical in construction. On a welded base sit seven bearing supports and an electric motor with a tensioning device.
Each of these supports has a roller with two cantilever ends: one carries a disc with rubber fingers, the other a V-belt pulley. The pulleys are connected by belts so that two adjacent discs rotate towards each other.
The discs with rubber fingers must face inward and be staggered in a chequerboard pattern, forming a working zone that is closed around its perimeter. The side rows (one beneath the other) are fixed in the bearing seats of links arranged in pairs in the housings. Each link is hinged to the end wall of a housing.
The axis of the bearing seat of the upper disc row coincides with the axis on which the link is fastened. 
The lower side row is positioned below the link mounting axis, which makes it possible to adjust the position of this row relative to the bird being processed by turning the links, this turning being carried out by a screw mechanism with right- and left-hand threads.
Similar mechanisms turn each row about its horizontal axis. The middle disc row is positioned on the supporting part of the machine by screw lifting mechanisms.
Above the machine a device is installed to supply hot water at 45–50 °C and to protect the conveyor's overhead tracks from contamination by feathers; it consists of two pipes and horizontal shields. The pipes run along the overhead track.
In the meat industry, centrifugal machines are used as part of universal lines for processing all types of poultry, where they remove feathers and wax mass from the slaughtered birds.
The centrifugal machine is a cylindrical body mounted on a frame. In its lower part is a rotating working disc, the upper surface of which — together with part of the inner surface of the body — carries rubber fingers.
The drive of the working disc is housed inside the frame and consists of an electric motor, a V-belt transmission, and a pair of bevel gears. The disc's rotational speed can be changed by shifting the belt on stepped pulleys.
In the lower part of the cylindrical body a perforated ring is welded in, with holes for supplying hot water into the machine. In the lower part of the frame a cone-shaped pan is fitted to collect and discharge the removed feathers. Slaughtered birds are loaded into the machine in batches from above.
The processed carcasses are discharged through a door operated by an automatic electromagnetic opening-and-closing device. This device is balanced with the conveyor and trips when a set number of hangers has passed over the machine. 
Filament-like feathers are removed in gas-singeing chambers. As the carcasses pass through the flame of the gas burners, they are also disinfected. On the chamber frame are mounted spherical shields whose convex side faces inward, and each shield has six openings closed off with mesh.
On the outside, burner nozzles lead up to these openings. The chamber contains 12 injection-type burners (six on each side). Gas supply to the burners is regulated by a plug cock. Depending on the properties of the gas being burned — bottled gas or mains gas — the cross-section of the burner nozzle opening can be changed.
The shields can be brought closer together and turned relative to the horizontal. The singeing time is regulated by the tilt of the shields. The sliding sleeves of the shields are locked by set screws with handwheels.
How are poultry feet removed automatically?
The foot-removal machine consists of a knife unit, a reduction gear, and a body (fig. 25). It is additionally equipped with a guide for the hangers, fixed to the conveyor's overhead track, that orients and finally positions the hangers with the birds along the track axis.
The two disc knives of the knife unit overlap each other. The knives are driven by a flange-mounted electric motor through a reduction gear and two chain transmissions. To even out the load on the electric motor, the gears of the reduction unit must create a substantial flywheel moment, which is why they are made massive.
Beneath the disc knives a box is fixed, the bottom and side wall of which have a cut-out on the discharge side through which the carcasses drop onto the receiving chute. 
The body of the machine consists of a fixed and a movable part. The fixed part has four feet, cross-members for rigidity, and guide tubes that join the two parts of the body together.
The movable part of the body, clad in shields, together with the reduction gear and knife unit mounted on it, can move vertically within the fixed guides. One of the guides carries a graduated control scale.
This movement is achieved by two lifting screws connected by a chain transmission, allowing the machine to be height-adjusted with a single handwheel. The machine is installed on the workshop floor under the conveyor line, along its axis. Carcasses of hens and chickens that have undergone primary processing are fed by conveyor to the machine.
Each hanger, with the bird fixed in it by the feet, turns and enters the machine side-on. The feet are brought to the knife one after the other and cut off slightly above the hock joint. The carcasses are delivered through a hatch onto the receiving table. The feet left in the hangers move on to the device for knocking them out.
The height at which the knives are set when processing birds of different sizes should be determined using the scale placed on one of the machine's supports and calibrated during its testing.
