19-22.] 



Notes on Feeding Stiffs for May. 



IT'.) 



NOTES ON FEEDING STUFFS FOR 



MAY. 



E. T. Halnan, M.A., Dip. Agric. (Cantab.), 

 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. 



The Composition of Wheat Offals. — In a letter received 

 recently, a correspondent stated that he experienced great 

 difficulty in ascertaining the exact value of any wheat offals he 

 bought, owing to the fact that the local names under which 

 they were offered differed from those usually given in the Notes 

 on Feeding Stuffs. It may be useful to give a brief account of 

 our present knowledge of the composition of wheat offal-, and 

 it is hoped that this account will help readers to classify their 

 own local products under the appropriate headings. The writer 

 would also appreciate any information as to the local names of 

 any wheat offals not given in the list below. 



A successful attempt to classify w T heat offals was made by 

 Prof. T. B. Wood and Mr. K. H. Adie in 1916, and very useful 

 information was obtained as a result of their investigation. 

 The following is a brief account of the chief facts established 

 by this investigation. 



In milling wheat for flour, the process consists essentially 

 of cracking and grinding the wheat kernels by passing them 

 through series of steel or stone rollers and sifting out the finest 

 particles by means of a fine silk sieve which has 130 meshes to 

 the linear inch. The particles that pass through this sieve form 

 the flour, and the remainder constitutes the " wheat offals." 

 The subsequent history and separation of the constituents of 

 the wheat offals depends to a large extent on the local milling 

 practice and the nature of the machinery available for separa- 

 tion. The coarser part of the offals, known under the name of 



bran " is extracted by passing the offals over a wire sieve 

 having 16 meshes to the linear inch. The bran is that portion 

 which fails to pass through the sieve. The greatest variation 

 in milling practice occurs in the separation of the finer particles 

 of offals. As with bran, the separation is a mechanical one, 

 the offals being graded according to whether or not they pass 

 through sieves of a given mesh. Where separation is most 

 complete, the intermediate offals are graded into three fractions, 

 known respectively as pollards, coarse middlings, and fine 

 middlings. Where separation is not so complete, the separate 

 fractions above may be combined, so that a mix tine of coarse 



f 2 



