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The objectives of this research were to evaluate the potential to use feather keratin as media component and to determine its effect on soil physical properties. To achieve these, the soil physical properties of three substrates such as P: V (50% peat moss:50% vermiculite, v/v), P: V: GF (35% peat moss: 35% vermiculite: 30% ground feather), and P: V: FF (45% peat moss: 45% vermiculite: 10% fermented feather) were determined by several experiments. The mixture of P: V had 89.7% in total porosity whereas P: V: GF and P: V: FF had 89.96% and 89.74%, respectively. In container capacity, P: V: GF had 84.3% which was 4% higher than P: V. The P: V had 9.6% and P: V: GF had 5.7% in air space. These results suggested that P: V: GF could hold more water than P: V and, hence, less gas diffusion could take place in P: V: GF than in P: V. However, the amendments with feather resulted in increase of unavailable water holding capacity which can not be used for plant growth. The media amended with ground feather (P: V: GF) had 2 times less saturated hydraulic conductivity than P: V, which suggested feather could be used as a medium component to decrease water leaching in containers. Moisture retention curves showed similar decrease among media, which indicated that three substrates could have similar aeration and water holding capacity with increasing height above the container bottom, thus, similar water availability and aeration at the top of container.
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