Lime treatment of keratinous materials for the generation of highly digestible animal feed: 1. Chicken feathers [An article from: Bioresource Technology]

This digital document is a journal article from Bioresource Technology, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Chicken feather keratin was treated with lime (calcium hydroxide) to obtain a liquid product rich in amino acids and polypeptides that can be used as an animal feed supplement. The effect of treatment conditions and the properties of the soluble keratin were studied. At high temperatures (150^oC), 80% of feather keratin was solubilized within 25min, whereas a relatively longer reaction time (300min) is needed at moderate temperatures (100^oC). After 3h of hydrolysis at 150^oC, 95% of feather keratin was digested. For the recommended conditions (100^oC, 300min, and 0.1g Ca(OH)"2/g dry feather), after lime treatment, about 54% of calcium can be recovered by carbonating. In rumen fluid, ammonia production from soluble keratin was similar to that of soybean and cottonseed meals and was greatly less than that of urea, indicating that no ammonia toxicity will result from cattle being fed soluble keratin.