Primary Audience: Turkey Producers, Nutritionists, Poultry Researchers DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM

The disposal of feathers is a formidable problem for the poultry industry. A very effi-cient and cost-effective method of disposal is to feed the feathers back to poultry as feather meal, provided this feed component does not negatively affect performance. Feathers in their natural state are high in crude protein. Keratin is the major constituent of feather protein, but due to cystine disulfide bonds within keratin, keratin proteins are poorly digested by animals. Researchers have explored various methods of processing feathers to make the protein available. Of these methods, autoclave hydrolysis appears to be the most effective [l]. Monitoring the hydrolysis of feathers is important, as the proper time and pressure are required to en-sure a highly digestible product [2,3]. The inclusion of up to 4 % feather meal in diets of broilers and laying hens does not affect the performance of the birds. However, inclusion of 5 to 8 % feather meal results in methionine, lysine, histidine, and tryptophan deficiencies that reduce the performance of chickens. Supplementation with the synthetic form of the deficient amino acids at the higher levels of feather meal inclusion results in improved performance [3,4,5,6,7J. Research has shown that 10 % of the dietary crude protein in a 24 % corn-soybean meal diet coul