Chicken feather: From waste to fertilizer

JALAJALA, Rizal – Poultry farms and entrepreneurs now need not worry on the disposal of the feathers of their dressed chickens.

A technology that can convert chicken feathers into organic liquid fertilizer has been developed by the Pililla Poultry Processing Plant, Inc. (PPPPI) in Pililla, Rizal.

It involves the treatment of the feathers with an enzyme-like product that liquefies not only the plumage but also the entire chicken carcasses.

The resulting nitrogen – and phosphorus-rich liquid can be used as an organic fertilizer, said PPPI president Rody Peralejo.

Feathers, explained Peralejo, do not easily decompose and even after 10 years buried in a landfill they retain their unique form. Disposing them, therefore, is a common problem of poultry dressing plants.

The PPPPI head introduced the technology to a group of government officials, Rizal residents, members of the aquaculture R&D community and the mass media who converged here recently.

Occasion was a visitation of a livelihood project being implemented by the Aquaculture-based Countryside Development Enterprise Foundation, Inc. (ABCDEF), a joint venture of the Meralco Foundation, Inc. (MFI) and the government-hosted Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC AQD).

Main guests were Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr., chairman of the Senate Committee on Food and Agriculture, and Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo Jr.

The project, which aims to encourage people in lakeside Rizal towns to engage in tilapia farming, is funded by Magsaysay’s countryside development fund.

Not having a farm of its own, PPPPI entered into a joint venture with ABCDEF to use part of the 10 hectares entrusted to it by MFI for an organic farm to demonstrate the firm’s feather-based liquid product.

ABCDEF is also using the product to fertilize its nursery ponds and has found it effective in inducing the growth of natural food organisms.

PPPPI has also solved the problem of storing and transporting a large volume of the liquid fertilizer through a process of drying the liquified waste feathers into a water-soluble meal. The dry product (meal) has been found to have a crude protein content of 70 percent.

Lorenzo has expressed great interest in the technological breakthrough.

Why Native Chicken Is Tastier Than Comm’l Broiler

It has long been known – and accepted — that native chicken is tastier than the commercial broiler. But not many know why.

With this in mind, Science Research Specialist Marites M. Ramil of the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) studied the factors that contribute to the difference in taste between the two chickens.

The study, which was Ramil’s thesis for a master’s degree at U.P. Los Baños, focus on the histological features and myofibrillar protein content of the skeletal muscle of commercial broiler and native chickens.

She explained that myofibrillar proteins are muscle proteins found in the myofibrils, which are the intracellular structures responsible for the muscle’s contractile activity. They account for 50-60 percent of the total protein in the skeletal muscle.

Results showed that the thigh muscles of free-range native chicken have higher myofibrillar protein content that those raised in confinement.

Moreover, chickens raised in the range have more densely packed fibers and pronounced increase in connective tissue between fascicles (bundles of muscle fibers) compared to chickens in confinement.

At 16 weeks, the native chicken’s breast muscle has higher amount of myofibrillar proteitn content that those raised in confinement. This is because native chicken use their wings or breast muscle for flying.

Native chickens are more exercised than commercial broilers because they move around the field in search for food, Ramil averred.

The study also found that native chicken meat has higher protein and lower water contents than those of commercial broilers.

"These unique characteristics of native chicken meat truly satisfy the discriminating taste of Filipino consumers," Ramil concluded.

Computer-Based Tree Planting Scheme Developed

Now it can be said: Many past government reforestation programs failed because the species used and the site where the tree seedlings were planted were incompatible.

This process, called species-site matching, is the first crucial step in planting forest trees. But implementers of past forestation programs failed to consider the scheme.

Different forest tree species respond to different ecological conditions such as soil, rainfall, and elevation. But it takes years to conduct field experiments just to identify which site would be suitable for a certain tree, and vice versa.

Now comes the good news: The long process of species-site matching experiments has been cut short with the introduction of a computer-based procedure developed by the Los Baños-based Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau (DENR-ERDB) and the Green Tropics International (GTI), a non government organization. Under the PCARRD-funded project, the procedure can be applied using the computer software that uses mathematical models that classify reforestation sites into good, average, or poor sites for establishing plantations of priority forest tree species.

"This efficient approach reduces time and cost for species-site experiments, ERDB Director Celso Diaz stated.

Dr. Diaz cautioned, however, that species-site matching is just the initial step. There are other plantation establishment and maintenance considerations that must be addressed to achieve successful forestation programs and thus restore forests throughout the country