Apr 2 (edited) • Rabbit Nutrition
More Rabbit Myths from the internet
Rabbits are hindgut fermenters, yes—but they are not the same as horses, rhinos, or elephants in how they process that fermentation.
Rabbits use cecotrophy. They produce nutrient-dense soft feces (cecotropes), then re-ingest them to run the digestion process a second time. That allows them to extract nutrients efficiently without needing continuous intake of large volumes of forage.
Horses, rhinos, and elephants do not do this. They rely on volume throughput—they have to keep eating constantly because they only get one pass at digestion.
Rabbits don’t.
They operate on a crepuscular feeding pattern—they primarily eat at dawn and dusk, then spend long periods resting while fermentation occurs in the cecum. During that time, they’re not “needing constant forage,” they’re actively digesting what they already consumed and then recycling it through cecotrophy.
So no, rabbits are not “the same” as other hindgut fermenters in feeding behavior or nutritional strategy.
They’re a high-efficiency recycler system, not a continuous grazing system.
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More Rabbit Myths from the internet
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