Feather meal
Encyclopedia
Feather meal is made from poultry
Poultry
Poultry are domesticated birds kept by humans for the purpose of producing eggs, meat, and/or feathers. These most typically are members of the superorder Galloanserae , especially the order Galliformes and the family Anatidae , commonly known as "waterfowl"...

 feather
Feather
Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds and some non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They are considered the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates, and indeed a premier example of a complex evolutionary novelty. They...

s by partially hydrolyzing under elevated heat and pressure and then grinding. Although total nitrogen
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

 levels are fairly high, the bioavailability
Bioavailability
In pharmacology, bioavailability is a subcategory of absorption and is used to describe the fraction of an administered dose of unchanged drug that reaches the systemic circulation, one of the principal pharmacokinetic properties of drugs. By definition, when a medication is administered...

 of this nitrogen may be low. Feathermeal is used in formulated animal feed
Compound feed
Compound feeds are feedstuffs that are blended from various raw materials and additives. These blends are formulated according to the specific requirements of the target animal...

 and in organic fertilizer
Organic fertilizer
Organic fertilizers are naturally occurring fertilizers .Naturally occurring organic fertilizers include manure, slurry, worm castings, peat, seaweed, humic acid, and guano. Sewage sludge use in organic agricultural operations in the U.S...

.
Poultry protein is a product resulting from the treatment of clean, undecomposed feathers from slaughtered poultry, free of additives. Worldwide, more than 25 billion chickens are used for human consumption. Feather meal is made through a process called rendering. Steam pressure cookers with a temperature of about 140°C are used to hydrolyze and sterilize the feathers. This partially hydrolyzes the proteins which denaturs it. It is then dried, cooled and ground into a powder for use as an organic soil amendment.

Feather Meal (FM) is a by-product of the poultry processing industry, and contains up to 12% Nitrogen. It is a source of high slow releasing organic nitrogen fertilizer for organic gardens. It is not water soluble and do not make a good liquid fertilizer.

•Used to increase green leaf growth
•Can be used as a compost decomposition activator
•Improves soil structure
•When adding to your garden as a nitrogen source, always blend it into the soil

Organic garden fertilizers are non-synthetic and non-petroleum chemical based naturally occurring substances used to make soil more fertile.
source Organic Gardening Info
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK