Abstract: A new method of extracting soluble protein from feather was introduced in the paper. Feather was preprocessed with sodium bisulfite and then hydrolysised by sodium hydroxide. After investigating the eωct factors such as amounts of sodium bisulfite, alkaline solution concentration, ratio of liquid to solid, hydrolytic temperature and hydrolytic time, the optimum hydrolytic conditions were obtained as follows: ω ( sodium bisulfite); ω ( feather)=30:100, alkaline solution concentration 0. 4%, ω(liquid); ω(feather)=15:1, hydrolytic temperature 90℃ and hydrolytic time 2 h. Under these conditions, the recovery ratio of the soluble feather protein was 65.7%.

Key words: feather, keratin, hydrolysis, optimum condition, protein