An Investigation on Chicken Leg Skin for the Preparation of Fashionable Leather and Leather Products

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R. Karthikeyan
N. Chandra-Babu

Abstract

Chicken leg is available in enormous quantity as a by-productfrom poultry industry. Due to lack of awareness and technology,most of the chicken legs are wasted by the poultry producers andthe skins are not utilized by the tanners. Hence, an attempt hasbeen made in the present study to investigate the feasibility ofturning chicken leg skins into leather and products. The rawskin was characterised and converted into finished leather byusing suitable tanning methodology and the resultant chickenleg leather with attractive grain pattern has been utilized for thepreparation of highly fashionable leather products. Histologicalexamination was carried out on the chicken leg skin at differentstages of processing. The leathers were characterized bydifferential scanning colorimetry and scanning electronmicroscopic analysis. The strength properties of the crustleathers were also tested and reported in the paper. Visualassessment reveals that vegetable tanning followed by chrometanning produces fuller and softer leathers with exquisitelyraised grain pattern compared to chrome tanning method andthe same is corroborated by SEM study.

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