NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF FEATHER AS AFFECTED BY STEAM PROCESSING

MOUSA, S.M.

doi:10.21608/avmj.1992.186639

NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF FEATHER AS AFFECTED BY STEAM PROCESSING

Document Type : Research article

Author

S.M. MOUSA

10.21608/avmj.1992.186639

Abstract

Fresh feather was collected from local slaughter-house and processed at 3 pressures (2, 2.5 and 3 Kg/cm) for 4 different times (0, 60, 75 and 90 min.) using laboratory autoclave. Nonprocessed feather (NPF) as well as processed feather (PF) were analyzed for aproximate analysis. In vitro p < /strong>epsin-Hc1 digestibility of dry matter (DM) and crude protein (CP) was calculated for both of NPF and PF. Three different PF were used to replace soybean meal (SBM) in three diets to test the effect of processing on digestibility. Four in vivo digestibility trails were conducted using the previous diets. The results indicated that the p < /strong>rocessing has no effect on chemical composition of feather. The in vitro study indicated that there was no interaction effect of pressure and time of processing on the digestibility of both DM and CP. Increasing time and/or pressure increased the pepsine-Hci digestibility for both DM and CP. Replacement of SBM by any of the three p < /strong>rocessed FM had no effect on digestibility of diet nutrients. Positive numerical differences were observed in digestibility of CP (1.8%), EE (2.1%) and CF (9.6%) when feather processed at 3 Kg/cm for 90 min replaced SBM. However, negative numerical differences were observed when feather processed at 3 Kg/cm for 0 min. time replaced SBM (4.5 and 3% for CP and NFE resp < /strong>.). The conclusion of the present study is that feather processed at 3 Kg/cm for 90 min could be used as a good source of CP for ruminants.