Essay On Chicken Feathers

Review Valorisation of Chicken feathers: Current status and Future prospects

Tamrat Tesfaye1 Bruce Sithole1, 2 Deresh Ramjugernath1
1Discipline of Chemical Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
2Forestry and Forest Products Research Centre, Natural Resources and the Environment, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Durban, South Africa

Abstract
Poultry–processing plants produce large quantities of feather by-product reaching 20 billion pound annually throughout the world, which in most cases, is not used as valuable resources. Since the demand for feather is low, the wastes are often processed into valuable products such as feather meal and fertilizers or the remaining waste could be totally disposed

The high quality feathers from the outer layers of ostrich feathers are highly desirable for this purpose because their very fine soft barbs will not scratch furniture surfaces. This is a scientific property of feathers that makes them trap dust and also the structural characteristic of the feathers gives them tiny fingers to catch dust (Poopathi and Abidha, 2007).

Feathers as bedding material
Feathers are also used as bedding material, such as pillows, as they fulfil all the requirements of good bedding such as warmth, cleanliness, fire resistance, softness, low absorption, drapability, fluff ability, launder-ability and durability. Only body feathers, generally from waterfowl, are used in the bedding industry. Additionally, feathers have superior insulating capability and lofting performance. These characteristics make goose down the preferred fill material for luxury comforters and pillows. Also, feathers are soft, warm, light-weight and have the ability to expand from compression (Bonser and Dawson,