What are wheat middlings?

Wheat middlings, or midds, are the fine particles of bran, shorts, germ and flour left when wheat is milled into white flour. They run about 18 percent crude protein on a dry-matter basis with energy that comes from fiber rather than starch, and their price runs on a seasonal cycle, softest in summer and firmest in winter.

How they are made, and how midds differ from mill run and bran

A flour mill grinds wheat and sifts the white endosperm out as flour. The outer bran, the small particles called shorts, the germ and some flour that will not sift clean come off as feed. The official feed definitions, which K-State Research and Extension reprints, draw the lines:

• Wheat middlings are fine particles of wheat bran, wheat shorts, wheat germ, wheat flour and some of the offal from the "tail of the mill," with no more than 9.5 percent crude fiber.
• Wheat mill run is coarse and fine particles of the same streams, under the same 9.5 percent fiber cap.
• Wheat bran is the coarse outer covering of the kernel on its own.

K-State notes the livestock and milling trades routinely use middlings and mill run interchangeably even though the two can differ in nutrient content, so a load's analysis says more than its name. The USDA board follows regional usage: it quotes middlings at six Midwest and Eastern points (Buffalo, Chicago, Minnesota, Kansas, the Kansas City region and St. Louis) and mill run on the West Coast, in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest. The site prices them on separate pages, wheat middlings and wheat millrun.

Protein, energy and minerals

Published tables agree on protein and disagree on energy. Mississippi State University Extension lists midds at 89 percent dry matter, 18.4 percent crude protein and 69 percent TDN; UF/IFAS Extension lists 18 percent protein and 70 percent TDN; the University of Arkansas table the site draws on, from NRC, lists 18.4 percent protein and 83 percent TDN. The Ration's cost board uses 18.2 percent protein and 79 percent TDN at 89 percent dry matter, inside that range. Where a load comes with its own analysis, that is the better number.

Mississippi State's table also shows the mineral imbalance that comes with every load: 0.99 percent phosphorus against 0.13 percent calcium on a dry-matter basis, so a ration with much midds in it has to be balanced for calcium.

Who feeds them and the limits

Beef and dairy cattle, hogs and poultry all use midds. Mississippi State describes them as generally good in energy and protein and moderately palatable, but readily fermented once eaten, so they should be combined with other ingredients to reduce the risk of acidosis, founder and bloat, and it limits them to 50 percent or less of total dry matter intake. Midds come as loose meal or pellets, and Mississippi State notes the pellets cannot be stored for long in hot, humid weather.

The seasonal price cycle

K-State wrote that midds availability is limited largely by the seasonal level of flour production and demand, and that midds prices quite often slip against their feed value in spring and early summer before strengthening in fall and winter. The board's own history of USDA's national median shows that cycle in every year it covers. Average price in June through August, against the average the following December and January:

• 2022: $175 a ton in summer, $208 that winter, up 19 percent
• 2023: $161, then $166, up 3 percent
• 2024: $102, then $145, up 43 percent
• 2025: $84, then $193, up 130 percent

2025 was the widest swing in the board's history, which starts in February 2022. In 2026 the June through August average was $134, and the four September reports ran from $166 to $201. The national figure also hides a wide regional spread: on the Sep 28, 2026 board, middlings ran from $140 a ton in Chicago to $257 in Kansas, all FOB plant, on the regional board.

Buying the summer dip is harder than the chart makes it look. K-State reports that producers who stored midds on the farm through the summer had variable and frequently unsatisfactory results, and more than 30 percent of the producers in its survey had run into mold, spoilage or bridging when storing midds long-term.

Against corn, midds cost less per pound of TDN in 163 of the 209 weekly reports from Jul 25, 2022 through Sep 28, 2026, at a median 86 percent of corn's cost. The margin moved with the cycle and the corn price: the yearly median was 79 percent in 2024, 70 percent in 2025 and 99 percent in 2026 through September.

Worked example

The arithmetic, with round numbers. At $170 a ton and 89 percent dry matter, a ton of midds costs $170 ÷ 0.89 = $191.01 per ton of dry matter. Divide by 2,000 × 0.79 = 1,580 pounds of TDN for $0.121 per pound of energy, and by 2,000 × 0.182 = 364 pounds of crude protein for $0.525 per pound of protein. Corn at $175 a ton works out to $175 ÷ 0.879 ÷ 1,760 = $0.113 per pound of TDN, so midds at $170 would cost about 107 percent of corn's price for energy.

The season moves that answer more than anything else. At 2025's summer average of $84, the same arithmetic gives $84 ÷ 0.89 ÷ 1,580 = $0.060 per pound of TDN; at that winter's $193 it gives $0.137, more than double.

To run the same math on your own quote and lab analysis, use the feed cost-per-nutrient calculator; the guide to comparing feed ingredients explains the method.

The Ration reports the USDA wheat middlings price as published and does the cost-per-nutrient arithmetic on it. It does not tell a reader what to feed or at what rate.