Nutritive value of feather keratin meals for ruminants

Feather keratin meal (FM) or feather keratin meal with 10% blood (FBM) were produced by hydrolysis of hen feathers for 30-40 min at 143 degrees C unde r 3 atm. of steam pressure. The obtained product was dried initially at 110 then at 90 degrees C for 5 h for FM and 7 h for FBM. FM and FBM contained 92.3 and 90.3% dry matter, and, respectively: 9,5 and 7.7% of ether extract , 3.2 and 3.9 ash and similar amounts of elude protein in both meals, 86.8% , on a dry matter basis. Rumen protein degradability coefficients determine d in situ were 0.30 and 0.32 and after in vitro digestion with pepsin intes tinal digestibility of rumen undegradable protein determined by the mobile bag technique were 0.74 and 0.71 for FM and FBM, respectively. Digestibilit y of dry matter, crude protein and fat determined on young bulls by the dif ference method were 80.5, 81.2 and 60.6 for FM, and 80.0, 83.9 and 64.0 for FBM, respectively. FBM contained less leucine, isoleucine and arginine, bu t more histidine, methionine, phenylalanine, tyrosine and lysine compared t o these amino acid contents in FM. The nutritive value of 1 kg FM and FBM expressed in INRA system units was: 1.16 and 1.11 UFL; 1.10 and 1.05 UFV: 563 and 551 g PDIN; 472 and 463 g PDI E; 425 and 407 g PDIA, respectively.