What type of corn is good for animal feeds?

Dent Corn is mostly used for animal feeds | Photo by Livier Garcia

List of Contents
I. What is Corn?
II. Why corn used as feed for animals?
III. What types of cornmeal are best for your animals?

What is Corn?

Corn, scientifically known as Zea mays, is a cereal grain and one of the most widely cultivated and important staple crops in the world. It is a member of the grass family, Poaceae. Corn originated in Mesoamerica and has been cultivated for thousands of years. The plant has a tall stalk with leaves and produces ears that contain the edible kernels. There are different varieties of corn, including dent corn, sweet corn, popcorn, and flint corn, each with its own specific characteristics and uses. But let just talk about the dent corn also known as Zea mays var. indentata which are mostly used for feed or as parts of animal feed ration especially for poultry.

Why corn used as feed for animals?

Corn is a high-energy feed ingredient due to its high carbohydrate content. It provides a concentrated source of calories, making it an excellent energy source for animals. Corn contains a balance of essential nutrients required by animals, including proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. While it is lower in protein compared to some other feed ingredients, corn can be supplemented with protein sources to meet specific dietary requirements. The starch in corn is highly digestible for many animals. It can be efficiently broken down and utilized by the digestive systems of monogastric animals like poultry and pigs. Ruminant animals like cattle can also utilize the energy in corn through fermentation in their rumen. Corn is widely cultivated in many region, this makes an economically choice for feed ration.

What types of cornmeal are best for your animals?

There's have three different types of Cornmeal such as Fine Corn, Corn Grits and Cracked Corn which is the Coarse one. The three different types of corn are best for in each animals you have raised. This would be best if you are creating your own feeds in farm. Formulating your own feeds can help raisers to minimize costing in their inputs which most of the costly part in raising animals.

Fine Corn is best for both poultry and swine. It is easily to mixed to other raw materials and highly digestable due to its fine texture. More cheap than corn grits and cracked corn. Best for mixing in D1, Copra cake and other feed materials.

Corn Grits is best for poultry because of its coarse texture. This is ready to use feed alone. You can mix other raw materials to corn grits based on your target nutrients and animals to fed.

Cracked Corn has a large cut size among types. It can also good for poultry but not for the young one. It is better to mixed into other rawmats by formulating feed specifically for grower to layering period.