This invention relates to machinery for the removal of viscera from poultry such as chickens or the like, and more particularly, to a poultry eviscerating apparatus which automatically eviscerates a continuous succession of birds without human intervention.
Many and varied types of poultry eviscerating apparatus are known. Some comprise devices in which a single bird or fowl is manually mounted in a predetermined position after which a specially designed tool analogous to a spoon is caused to enter the abdominal cavity of the bird for removal of the viscera. Such manual machines are both time consuming and expensive to operate since each requires at least one human operator as well as attendant facilities to provide him with uneviscerated birds and remove those that have been eviscerated.
Other eviscerating apparatus has been devised to eviscerate birds or fowl traveling on a continuous conveyor. Such machines have tended to be rather complex devices and/or have required hand loading of the birds. Such machinery as has contemplated automatic loading has tended to be unreliable, suffering many breakdowns during use. Such breakdowns comprise a significant expense to poultry processors.
A particularly disadvantageous aspect of the prior known eviscerating apparatuses for processing a continuous succession of birds or fowl is the fact that these machines cause a shut-down in the entire poultry processing line during the above-mentioned breakdowns. Typically, eviscerating machinery forms but a part of several processing elements spaced along a continuous conveyor in a processing plant. Removal of the viscera from the fowl precedes the washing, sorting, and inspection of the various useable parts thereof. Evisceration also precedes the final processing of the remainder of the fowl carcass. Since the prior known machines have been integral parts of such processing lines, and the conveyors have passed continuously around or through the eviscerating apparatus, a breakdown of the eviscerating machine necessitates a corresponding stoppage of the main processing conveyor thereby shutting down all of the above-mentioned operations. Breakdowns with the prior known machines, therefore, have proven to be extremely costly.
The present invention provides a poultry eviscerating apparatus which is capable of eviscerating a continuous succession of birds or fowl without human intervention and which is extremely reliable in its operation. If breakdown or malfunction should occur, however, the apparatus includes means to disconnect it from the conveyor or line, permitting the line to continue running and the manual evisceration of the birds or fowl while the eviscerating apparatus is repaired.