Maize is a cereal just like oats and barley and is the ingredient that looks a bit like corn flakes in your ponys mix, in fact in America maize is commonly called corn. Maize is usually fed flaked or micronised to improve its digestibility. Flaking means that the maize has been cooked in steam, whilst micronising involves cooking the maize at high temperatures and then rolling it. Maize is higher in starch than the other cereals and is low in fibre making it very energy dense and in fact maize has the highest energy levels of all the cereals and contains twice as much energy as the same volume of oats.