Feedstuff industry in Thailand is experiencing high-cost production since raw materials for animal feeds are imported at considerably large quantities and high values. Meanwhile, poultry processing plants generate feathers in abundant volume as a waste every year. To reduce the production cost, the feather utilization as a feed protein replacing the imported materials is very attractive and being actively explored.
This project is proposed with the aim in feather bioconversion into an easily digestible feed protein containing high essential amino acids. The success of this work would lead to a successful development of feather biodegradation to be animal feedstuff and industrialization of this process in thailand.
Two feather bioconversion systems will be used to produce a feed protein. Enzymatic hydrolysis and microbial fermentation on feathers will be carried out under different conditions to give more digestible feather proteins. The protein products will be also examined for nutritional values.
Objective
The specific aims of this project is to convert chicken feather into an easily digestible feed protein with high essential amino acid contents by biological processes. The long term goal is to add values to low-cost feathers and to reduce feather volume and pollution accumulated in nature.
Expected output
An effective approach for bioconversion of feathers into a feed protein will be presented. Additionally, free amino acid profiles and percentage of protein digestibility generated by different methods of feather biodegradation will be the outputs which are valuable information to design and develop a pilot project in feather utilization. useful for future poultry processing and feed industries in Thailand.
