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A Quick Look At Feathered Friends
Seed Cleaning Operation

This is one of Feathered Friends seed cleaners. This machine is dedicated to cleaning canary seed. The seed is poured into the hopper (top left) where it passes the through a narrow section where the fans remove quite a bit of the dust. Then it goes through the first stage screen, which is quite large and removes large foreign objects. The seed then falls through to the second stage screen which is slightly larger than the seed itself. The second stage screen then removes anything else that is still larger than the canary seed. The third stage screen is the last screen that the seed hits. This screen is slightly smaller than the canary seed. Anything that is too small, including undeveloped seed falls through this screen. The canary seed then goes into an auger, that the fans are continuously sucking the dust and hulls out of. This auger moves the seed into the bottom of the elevator that lifts the seed up to, then dumps it into the final hopper as clean seed.

Samples of the cleanings

     Below are some samples, taken from one lot of canary seed, showing some of the stuff removed from the seed during cleaning. Feathered Friends cleans all of the seeds that it uses prior to mixing and packaging. Some of the seeds are very clean to start with and some produce even more waste than the canary seed shown below. Feathered Friends even cleans the gravel and the rabbit pellets.

This is an example of the waste products that are larger than the canary seed. This sample, is a mix from both the first and second stage screens.

This is an example of the waste products that are smaller than the canary seed. This sample includes undeveloped or undersized canary seed from the third stage screen.

This is an example of the waste products that the fans have picked up, prior to the first stage screen and at the auger. This sample shows all of the lightweight seeds, hulls, heavy dust, etc that the fans have cleared out. Typically a fifty-pound bag can be filled from this dump alone after cleaning 20 bags of canary seed. Not shown is the fine dust that is collected on the filters. There are 12 filters that measure 16" * 20" each. After cleaning 20 bags of canary seed, the dust collected on these filters (once it has been knocked off) weighs about 10 pounds.

This is the finished product, clean canary seed. The canary seed is run through the cleaner twice to remove as much waste as possible, even so, there is always a little bit that gets through.