Good news for poultry farm and abattoir owners. Disposal of huge quantities of chicken feathers will soon no longer be an arduous task, thanks to a new micro-organism that can disintegrate the protein in them in just about 30 hours. Chicken feathers usually take five to seven years to disintegrate because of the keratin component in them. They can�t be burnt because the process releases large quantities of sulphur, compounds of which are harmful to animal and plant life.