Hide is a by-product of meat production and is mostly used for leather production. Collagen is the main protein in mammalian skin, connective tissue and cartilage and presents an opportunity for value addition to waste skin by extracting collagen. Acid-solubilisation (AS), acid-enzyme solubilisation (AES1) and modified acid-enzyme solubilisation (AES2) were used to extract collagen from various bovine hides. The hide sources differed with respect to the animal’s age, sex, diet and environment and influenced collagen yield, and therefore the economic benefit of extraction. The highest dry solids yield was from bull hides using the AES2 method (20.19 %). On the other hand, the lowest yield was from face-pieces (5.68%) and the AS method proved to be inefficient for collagen extraction from bull, cow, face-piece and ox-hide sources. Analysis concluded that all the samples were of Type I collagen with α, β, and γ chains. The effect of glycerol concentration on processability of collagen-based films were also analysed. Different plasticizer concentrations were used to study the physical properties, secondary structure and thermal properties of natural biodegradable films prepared from collagen extracted from bovine hides. Acid-enzyme-soluble collagen extracted from calf (CH1) and bull-hides (BH) were the primary material for the solution casting films. Results showed that plasticizer concentrations of 80% (F1), 40% (F2) and 20% (F3) did not have a huge effect on the physical properties of the films such as film thickness and transparency. However, an increase in the plasticizer content showed a significant change in the film mechanical and thermal characteristics. Tensile strength increased from 1.18 MPa to 13.84 MPa and from 1.33 MPa to 15.1 MPa for BH and CH1-collagen based films respectively, with decreasing plasticizer concentration. FTIR showed the characteristic bands of collagen observed in literature. FTIR showed evidence of possible hydrogen bonding with the plasticizer at high glycerol concentrations for both CH1 and BH collagen-based films. Keywords: biopolymer films, collagen, protein, plasticizer concentration, glycerol