Grain maize on the rise
The UK’s maize acreage is on the rise and predictions suggest that climate change will drive this further. Prolonged wet weather has become a regular feature of UK winters which is challenging the growth of traditional cereals, particularly in the west.
Maize is said to represent a logical alternative, generally being drilled after winter rains and floods have subsided and reaching deep for moisture during summer droughts.
This presents opportunities for more home-grown livestock feeds – not just through the high tonnage of forage the crop can produce but for the opportunity it offers to be harvested as grain.
Grain maize can be crimped to make a concentrate feed of high nutritional quality, with the prospect of 68-73% starch and a metabolisable energy (ME) of around 14-14.5MJ/kg DM. It can be safely fed to ruminants in higher quantities than dry grain, and is increasingly forming part of progressive producers’ livestock diets.
However, where growers have no livestock of their own, grain maize is opening up opportunities for the farm-to-farm trading of high-quality, transportable feed.
All of this is driving a spread of maize beyond its traditional areas, and the northwest of England – where wheat and barley are particularly challenged – has seen new growers trying maize for the first time, specifically for grain. With no established trading platform for this maize to be sold, it has been important for the growers and users to be linked, which is forming a virtuous chain.
At Kelvin Cave we have identified and supported some of our clients through the process, often working alongside independent agronomists and nutritionists.
Kelvin Cave’s role in the supply chain
The Kelvin Cave team is passionate about producing home-grown feeds – shortening supply chains, reducing carbon footprint, cutting out middlemen, improving livestock performance and ultimately keeping more profit behind the farm gate.
With an established customer base of livestock producers and crimping contractors as well as good working relationships with respected independent nutritionists and agronomists, will aways do our best to link arable growers with livestock producers who want to find reliable markets and sources for their products.
As farming profits are squeezed from every direction; as pressure grows to reduce imports and carbon footprint; and as incentives arise for regenerative farming practices, we become more and more convinced that home-grown feeds represent the future for a resilient UK farming industry.
In this article we talk to:
- An arable farmer near Liverpool who is switching land from cereals to grain maize and selling his crop to livestock producers.
- The agronomist who made the recommendation
for this switch to be made. - A Scottish dairy farmer who is buying grain
maize from this grower to use in rations for his
milking cows. - And the nutritionist who is formulating the
rations for this herd.
The Growers
Mike Greenwood and Helen Knight run a mixed arable and suckler beef operation based around Headbolt Farm in Formby, on the west coast between Liverpool and Southport, and branched into crimped grain maize around two years ago. Farming around 600 acres (243ha) of their own land, they also contract-farm up to 1,000 acres (405ha) of wheat, oats (for human consumption) and occasionally beans. They sell all their grain maize as crimp to livestock producers.
Mike says:
We wanted to try something different as we’ve been finding it harder and harder to grow cereals, which just weren’t performing like they used to. Years ago, spring crops would do a lot better on this farm and yields of winter wheat would be around 3-3.5t/acre. We’ve never been a 4t/acre farm, as we have very wet ground which I’d describe as silty, flat, moss land.
But now, the weather is wetter and we may get as little as 1.5t/acre in a poor year. We also find winter crops are too hungry – they are too dependent on fertilisers and chemical inputs, and were losing us money.
So, we introduced maize in 2024 which turned out to be a really bad year to go into something new. We had a late, wet spring and were late sowing, as well as a wet harvest.
We always intended to take the maize as grain rather than forage, as we could harvest it with a combine on tracks, cart it to the trailers on headlands and make no mess.
We initially thought we’d sell the grain dry and planned to harvest at a moisture content of 27% and dry it to 14-15%. The drying would have cost us £40-£50 per tonne although that would be more at current fuel prices. However, we were introduced by our agronomist [Paul Sweeney] to the idea of crimping and decided to set everything up to crimp instead of dry. This turned out to be a blessing as the maize came in at 35% moisture, which would have been too wet to dry.
We used James Tomlinson, a local contractor, to carry out the crimping and it worked brilliantly – it was a bit like making silage. As long as we’re careful to roll, use the right preservative – we use CrimpSafe 300 – and compact, sheet and keep the clamp tightly sealed, we get a really high quality product which is no problem at all to transport to other farms.
Paul also introduced us to Michael Carpenter [Kelvin Cave Ltd] before we started and the two of them have helped us find several outlets for the crimped maize and driven the process forward.
Angus Kerr takes an artic load as he requires, and is feeding it to his dairy cows. Dairy producers want a consistent product and we can keep them happy with that at a given price. We base this around the price of wheat and try not to change that once it’s agreed for the season. He seems to be very happy with it – as are the other producers we supply.
We grew maize again in 2025 and had a better year with yields of around 3.5-4 tonnes/acre. The crop is making a profit, but we keep experimenting and still want to improve. For 2026 we are sowing around 200 acres [81ha] and have switched to a variety – Pioneer 7326 – which seemed to perform consistently better than others we’ve tried.
We have also now purchased a Murska 2000 to do the crimping ourselves as we were so impressed with the build-quality of our contractor’s machine and the sample it was producing. However, we decided to go for specialist 4mm fluted maize rollers which will increase output, instead of the multi-purpose rollers used in our contractor’s machine. We’ve also opted for a weighing system and Silaspray SP applicator to ensure we apply the CrimpSafe 300 as accurately as possible.
We like the flexibility maize is giving us and particularly like harvesting for crimp when we can crack on early with harvest. At the other end of the season, we have even harvested a small amount remaining in March 2026, which has overwintered well and demonstrates the flexibility of the crop when it’s harvested as grain.
We can’t speak highly enough of the help we have received from Paul Sweeney and Kelvin Cave, and may increase our acreage further if it keeps doing well and we know there’s a customer base. We crimp all the maize we grow and we might even feed some to our own stock but we’ve sold out every year so far.
The Agronomist
Paul Sweeney is the agronomist at Mike Greenwood’s farm, where he encouraged the switch from traditional wheat and barley and into grain maize. He confidently predicts grain maize will become one of the largest acreage crops grown in the UK, and has helped drive its success on many northern farms.
Paul says:
In some of the northwestern counties I cover, including south Lancs, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to maintain consistent yields of traditional cereals.
Climate change is undoubtedly driving weather extremes, and it’s no longer uncommon for prolonged wet conditions from September to April to be followed by drought through the summer months.
Waterlogging over winter does not suit winter wheat or barley, and the problems it causes are exacerbated on heavy land. These same problems can also make it difficult for spring cereals to be drilled in a timely way.
In contrast, maize does not need to be sown until late April or early May, by which time, conditions tend to be drier. Once established, the crop’s rooting structure can reach deep, giving it a drought tolerance not seen in cereals. In areas worst hit by dry conditions in 2025, it was obvious on many farms that maize was the crop which thrived.
Specialist arable farmers tend to find maize is an easy crop to grow, although as with anything new, it might take two or three years for the skills to be acquired.
Weed and disease control are fairly simple and a maize crop will need a fraction – about a quarter – of the agrochemicals required for wheat. It normally requires no fungicide or insecticide and may potentially be treated once or twice for weeds.
The downside is the seed cost – at least double that of wheat – and it’s important to get seed rate right to optimise yields and profits.
We know harvesting maize silage can have a bad press because of soil damage from tractors and trailers, but this isn’t a problem when maize is harvested as grain. Beginning harvest from late October, although a maize header is required, a traditional, wheeled combine is usually up to the job. In some cases, farmers and contractors prefer to use tracked combines to further reduce compaction, although in many cases this is not essential. The leaf and stem left in front of the combine make a bed on which the machine runs and if left over winter, protect the soil from run-off and add structure and organic matter when they’re ploughed in.
Growers may be put off by having to dry grain maize which is likely to need reducing in moisture content by around 10 percentage points. That’s both too slow and expensive, which is why I’m recommending to some clients they consider crimping instead. Around 200 tonnes per day can be harvested and crimped at an ideal moisture content of 30-35%. If well compacted, sealed and preserved with CrimpSafe 300, it can be stored in a covered clamp and can easily be transported and re-ensiled.
I’ve recommended to growers like Mike that we need to line up livestock farmers who’d like to buy crimp, and provided those relationships can be established, I think they could develop a thriving trade.
The attraction for the livestock producer is that crimped grain maize is about the most energy dense crop they’d be able to buy. Longer term, growing maize, in particular for grain, is a great prospect for arable producers: it’s a good break from wheat, and potentially oilseed rape, and can be grown year after year.
The Feeder
Angus Kerr runs two dairy herds totalling around 750 milkers based around Crochmore Farm, 10 miles west of Dumfries. Also keeping some 200 head of beef-dairy crosses to rear and finish, the total area of the two farms of around 1,000 acres (405ha) supplies all the forage, including wholecrop cereals, for the dairy and beef rations. However, a starch shortfall has been made up by crimped maize, which was bought in last year
Angus says:
We had already experienced crimp when we’d bought barley off the combine last harvest. We switched to crimping this, using CrimpSafe Hi Dry, on the recommendation of our nutritionist, Stephen Caldwell and after we’d seen its success, it was a natural progression to move to crimped maize.
Previously we’d used a urea-based product to preserve our grain but we hadn’t been happy with the consistency, with some particularly bad areas where the ammonia [from the breakdown of urea] hadn’t penetrated the grain.
The crimped barley, in contrast, was well preserved all the way through and we used it in total mixed rations for dairy and beef. With this success we were happy to move on to crimped maize which helped balance a shortfall of starch.
We balanced its high energy with some traditional sources of bought-in protein, such as rapemeal and we found this approach to be more cost-effective and give us a better quality true protein than treating with urea.
Last year, we arranged to buy five artic loads of crimped maize direct from Mike Greenwood just organising delivery – through Bulman Bulk Haulage – ourselves. Each time we wanted another load, we’d just give them three or four days’ notice and they would organise collection with Mike.
Mike kindly split the delivery cost of £17 per tonne which meant the product was £181 per tonne delivered. There was no cut for any middleman, although Michael Carpenter at Kelvin Cave helped set everything up.
When a 29-tonne load of crimped maize arrives on the farm, we store it in a temporary clamp made of bales inside a silage pit. It’s tipped, compacted, sheeted and fed, and we move through the clamp at a rate of about 2.5 tonnes per day. It comes out really fresh every time and we order a load roughly every 10 days.
The crossbred herd [Holstein x Montbeliarde x Scandinavian Red] calves in a block from late July to early November and is yielding just short of 10,000 litres at 4.7% fat and 3.65% protein [2x]. It’s on a TMR which includes the crimped maize at a rate of 7kg/cow/day, wholecrop and crimped barley, grass silage, molasses, chopped straw and a premix.
We’re very pleased with the butterfat which suits our Arla contract and is a good indication of a healthy rumen. The cows are healthy and cudding well, with no major health issues at all. Although we reckon the cost of crimped maize might be more than ground maize on a dry matter basis, there is no comparison between the two feeds. From a rumen health point of view the crimp is so much better and can be fed in far higher quantities.
Last year, we went on to order more loads of maize than originally arranged but after the seventh – about 200 tonnes – there was no more available. We will definitely buy from Mike again this year and are discussing quantities at an earlier stage to help him plan before buying his seed.
The Nutritionist
Stephen Caldwell has been formulating the milking ration for Angus Kerr’s 500-head, autumn calving crossbred herd for many years. He was keen to move the herd on to crimp for its rumen health benefits and impact on milk quality.
Stephen says:
We’d been pushing up yields in Angus’s herd over many years with a focus on milk solids for his Arla contract. So, I was very keen for him to see the benefits of crimp in terms of how it behaved in the ration.
Previously he’d included maize meal which, at 80% dry matter, looked a good value ingredient. However, feeding any quantity of this in the TMR – just like feeding two or three slugs of concentrates – leads to a rapid reduction in rumen pH which impacts rumen health as well as milk solids.
Crimp, in contrast, can be fed at fairly high quantities and I was completely happy to include 7kg/head of crimped maize in the dairy ration. It won’t cause the severe drop in pH which dry rolled or ground cereals produce.
Combining the crimped maize with crimped barley also gave us an opportunity to ditch the urea-treated grain – a product I always discourage. Angus had experienced himself some quality issues with urea-treated feed, although my own objections also stem from the waste it creates and its effects on cattle health.
There is plenty of evidence that much of the nitrogen in urea is wasted as ammonia, which is evident from the smell to anyone feeding urea-treated grain. But more important is that high urea can also produce ammonia in the rumen, which impairs efficiency and cattle fertility.
All round, I am far more comfortable feeding crimp, combined with a source of high-quality protein or amino acids. So, in this instance, we balanced the high energy with protected methionine and lysine, using these amino acids for 30 days before and 100 days after calving.
With this combination, the utilisation of the ration’s energy has been far better and milk quality has improved. Weight of milk protein has also increased and fertility has improved because the environment within the cow has been more healthy and stable.
A healthy cow is always going to win and an Arla contract will reward the improvement in solids.
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