Why is crimping profitable? • No drying costs • Lower labour costs • Appetising feed • Less weather-reliant • Longer threshing period • Up to 30% larger grain harvest (dry matter) • Improved feed/straw value • You can adopt higher yield varieties • You can thresh three weeks earlier, at a time of highest nutrient content • Reduces toxin levels • Milk even 11% more By crimping into a plastic tube • No need for silos or dryers • It takes just one operation to crimp and preserve the grain • Quick and easy • Your grain preservation system gives optimum productivity

TTS 2017/12 - Reetta Palva

High quality cost-effective feed

Crimping is a cost-effective way to produce high-quality feed for all livestock. It improves profitability of the farm by reducing costs of investments (dryer, storage) and energy (oil, electricity). Production costs of crimped grain are much lower than those of dried grain.

Crimped grain is ready to feed without any further processing. It can be used directly from the storage for feeding as such or as a component of  Total Mixed Rations (TMR) for cattle or in liquid feed for pigs. Ensiling of crimped grain is based on lactic acid fermentation by lactic acid bacteria. Favourable environment for lactic acid fermentation is created by lowering the pH of crim-ped grain to the level of 4 and by anaerobic conditions.

Cultivation technique and harvesting

Grain for crimping can be cultivated similarly to grain for drying, but it is harvested 2-3 weeks earlier at the yellowish stage when the grain’s energycontent and protein content are at their highest.

Early harvesting allows cultivation of late varieties with higher yield potential. Fertilization is also more flexible and manure can be used more freely.

Grain at the yellowish stage is sof-ter and bigger than at the mature stage. The moisture content of the grain is typically 30-40%.

Storage

Crimped grain can be stored in plastic tubes, bunker/horizontal silos, clamps or airtight tower silos.

Bagging of crimped grain

Bagging of crimped grain in plastic tubes is low-cost and simple grainprocessing and storage method. Bagging is easy, since no consolidation or weig-hing is needed. No fixed storages are needed and size of the tube can be adjusted according to the yield. Crimping in bags is flexible as it can be stopped at any time and continued later. Bagging is also less weather dependent than ensiling in clamp silos.

Valuable and low-cost feed for all livestock

Despite of the earlier harvesting time, the nutrient content of crimped grain is similar to that of the grain harvested at full mature stage. Crimped corn is very high performance feed and can achieve even 11% increase for the milk production of dairy cows.

Ruminants

Beef cattle grow as well or even faster with crimped grain as compared to dried grain. Several studies have confirmedthat dairy cows produce as much milk with crimped grain as with dried grain.

Overall nutritive value of crimped grain for ruminants is similar to that of dried grain. The actual amounts of crimped grain fed or used in TMR are higher thanthose of dried grain due to lower dry matter content of crimped grain.

Otherwise crimped grain can be fed as dry grain and it can completelyreplace dry grain in feeding

Pigs

Crimped grain can be fed to pigs as such. It fits perfectly for liquid feeding. In practice, 8-10% variation in dry matter content of grain does not affect the daily growth or the feed conversion ratio. Vitamin E content is lower in crimped grain.

In practice, crimped grain can fully replace dried grain in the feeding of pigs.

Poultry

Crimped grain as such is palatable feed for poultry, too. Crimped grain improves both daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio of broiler chickens. This is related to the 25% higher energy value of crimped grain as compared to that of dried grain.

Energy value is increased due to the lower ß-glucan content in crimped grain resulting in lower gut content viscosity. This effect is similar to that of ß-glu-canase enzyme. Digestibility of lysine and threonine are increased in broilers fed crimped grain as compared to those fed dried grain. Similarly to pigs, digestibility of phosphorus is increased, too.