Chicken feathers have become a popular material in all sorts of products. While bird feathers are commonly thought of in things like feather pillows and boas, chicken feathers aren’t quite the right material to provide warmth, so they are not amongst the bird feathers used for such products. Six billion tons of feathers are produced—and generally thrown away—by the poultry industry each year, but the amount being discarded has been reduced due to one chemist’s idea in 1993.
Walter Schmidt made an arrangement with Perdue Farms and Tyson Foods, two of the biggest poultry producers, to obtain all of their chicken feathers. Along with his colleagues, Schmidt performed tests on the feathers and made all sorts of creations with them. He created the first paper made out of chicken feathers, and other products like dishes, clothing items, and furniture. Schmidt and his colleagues found that chicken feathers have keratin, which produces strong proteins and provides a biodegradable option to some plastics.
The work done by this group of chemists has provided inspiration for others to make their own creations. A group of students at the University of Delaware created shoes made of chicken feathers, soybeans, and natural fibers. One woman in Oregon opened a business selling feathers from her own chickens to jewelry makers, hat designers, and artists. Groups are working on all sorts of new product ideas and patents to utilize chicken feathers, which they believe is the material of the future.