Tuesday

Sanitizing Guinea Hen Feathers

In order to use feathers from my mom's free-roaming hens in my designs, I first have to put them through a sanitization process so that all of the farm yuckies don't end up in my customer's hair. Here's how I clean them:
Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
These are feathers collected over time by my mom and I. Feathers constantly fall off of my mom's Guinea Hens as they are running around and we pick them up off the grass.

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
First I rinse them in warm water to remove debris= grass, hay, mud, and sometimes even dried guinea poop. Nice.

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
Into a pot of boiling water they go...

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
Stir, stir, stir for quite awhile. Boiling cleans and kills any germs that may remain.

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
When I remove them from the pot of water they are in a soaking wet heap.

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
I smooth out the feathers one by one...

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
....and lay them out to dry on cotton towels.

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
After 24 hours or so, the beautiful feathers are clean, dry, and naturally fan out a bit....

Boiling Feathers from Mom's Guinea Hens 11/22/11
...and they are ready to be made into funky hair accessories!

2 comments:

  1. Love! Have you experimented with dying them at all?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not yet- my mom dyed some purple once and they looked really nice!

    p.s. your etsy shop looks great!!

    ReplyDelete