Feather meal

Feather meal, also called feather powder, is a useful product made from poultry feathers. It is made by grinding feathers with heat and pressure, then drying them. Even though it has a lot of nitrogen, our bodies sometimes need special treatment, called hydrolyzed, to use it well.

Feather meal is often used to make special animal feed and organic fertilizer. It helps change something that used to be thrown away into something valuable.

Each year, many chickens are used for food around the world. Their feathers used to be seen as waste, but now using feather meal helps save energy and reduce carbon emissions from throwing feathers away. This makes it a helpful and eco-friendly resource.

Animal feed

Feather meal is used to feed animals. The tough material in feathers must be broken down so animals can use it. One way to do this is called rendering. In rendering, steam and high pressure cook the feathers at very hot temperatures. After this, the feathers are dried, cooled, and ground into a powder. This powder can be used as a protein source in animal feed, especially for animals like cows and fish.

There are other methods to break down feathers, such as using acids, fermentation, or special enzymes.

Plant fertilizer

Feather meal has a lot of nitrogen and sulfur. It also contains helpful nutrients like iron and zinc.^{: Table 3}  It is an organic fertilizer because it does not use chemicals or oil.

Feather meal releases nitrogen slowly when soil microbes break it down. It does not dissolve in water, so it is best mixed into the soil. This helps plants grow green leaves and improves the soil by encouraging helpful microbes and aiding in composting. There is also a type that releases nitrogen quickly.

Issues

Some countries used to add special medicines to chicken feed. This could have put people at risk of arsenic exposure. The United States stopped allowing this in 2013. Recent studies in China found higher levels of arsenic in soil near chicken farms, but these were still considered safe.

Chickens sometimes get antibiotics and other medicines. These can stay in their feathers after processing. The leftover medicines can stop some bacteria from growing, but they do not affect bacteria that are already resistant.