The fastest human butchers can fully debone about 150 chickens per hour. That’s a lot of chickens! But the new Mayekawa Automatic Chicken Deboner easily bests it, masterfully breaking down a whopping 1,500 chickens in the same amount of time–which, if our math is correct, is ten times faster than a flesh-and-blood butcher.
Automatic chicken deboners are often faster than humans, but often do a poor job of butchering, as they have difficulty adjusting to the different sizes and shapes of poultry. You can’t simply cut every chicken in the same place, to the same depth, in the same way–you’ll end up with some good birds and some mangled birds. The Mayekawa addresses that problem with a custom-built camera setup that analyzes each chicken and then adjusts the butchering so as to cut to the right depth and in the right place.
Here’s some video of the Mayekawa deboner in action. It’s pretty bloodless and mechanical, being a butchering robot and all, but there is definitely still footage of a chicken carcass being yanked from its bones, so if you’re put off by that kind of thing, beware. Oh, and if you can’t get enough robot-deboning, check out the Mayekawa ham de-boner, which is significantly stabbier than this chicken version.
