White chicken feathers were obtained from poultry researchcenter at University of Alberta and they were washed several timeswith soapy hot water. The cleaned feathers were dried by spread-ing in a closed fume hood for one week to evaporate water andthereafter, they were placed in ventilated oven for 24 h at 50◦C tocompletely remove remaining moisture. The hollow shaft, calamuswere trimmed from vane of CFs using pair of scissors. Processed CFswere ground using a Fritsch cutting mill (Pulverisette 15, Laval Lab.Inc., Laval Canada) at a sieve insert size of 0.25 mm. The batchesof ground CFs (30 g each) were further treated in Soxhlet (extrac-tion tube with 50 mm internal diameter) for 5 h with 250 mL ofpetroleum ether. After evaporating petroleum ether, dried CFs were stored in desiccator at room temperature until they were used forexperimental work.