What Do Cotton Pickers Pick

The cotton picker is either a machine that harvests cotton in a way that reduces harvest time; or a person who picks ripe cotton fibre from the plants. The machine is also referred to as cotton harvester.

How does a cotton picker pick cotton?

A cotton picker removes the seed cotton from the burr by means of high-speed rotating spindles which extract the cotton from the open burrs of the plants which then wrap around moistened spindles. The spindles are then cleaned off by a specialized machine, known as a doffer, to extract the cotton that has been removed.

What is picking cotton called?

Just as the name suggests, a cotton picker basically picks the cotton. It picks the cotton from the bolls—which are the fluffy and round clumps of cotton you see growing on the plants—using revolving prongs or finger-like spindles.