The A-Z of Grasscutter Farming

Grasscutter (Thryonomys swinderianus) farming business is on the rise, and many people want to know how to start.
Grasscuter are also known as Cane rats n English speaking West African countries, Agouti in French speaking West African countries, and Hedgehogs in Central Africa. In Nigeria they are called Oya, Gafia (Gouza or Guahia) and Nchi in Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo languages respectively.

These animals are harmless rodents widely found in mangroves, swamps, rain forest and savannas. Though these animals are widely hunted in Africa, they can be domesticated like other micro-livestock animals such as rabbits. They live in groups and don't burrow but can use holes dug by other animals. The grasscutter in the bush is more active at night. Grasscutter meat is acceptable to most religions and societies. A large proportion of the grasscutter consumed in Africa are hunted in the bush. One kilogramme of grasscutter can cost about twelve times the cost of 1kg of cow meat (beef), ten times the cost of goat meat and eight times the cost of chicken. This makes grasscutter farming a very profitable business to go into.

However, before going into profitable grasscutter farming, essential knowledge of grasscutter is important.

Characteristics of Grasscutter

Grasscutter is a microlivestock covered with coarse bristly fur. The upper fur s brown while the under is light brown and that of the belly is white. The body length is between 20cm to 75cm. The adult body length is 60cm to 75cm while the body length of the day-old is 20cm to 25cm. The tail easily fractures and breaks loose if not properly held at the base. They become sexually active and mature at 5-6 months. At this age they can reproduce and give birth to as high as 12 young. They can be easily reared or managed, and this made their domestication as an alternative to poaching them in the wild. They can grow rapidly in intensive conditions, and the meat of grasscutters is very rich in protein and economically valuable. The edible meat in Grasscutter is about 80% (including the head and entrails which are usually eaten). Like the rabbit, grasscutters are coprophagus (they eat their soft feaces directly from their anus)

How to Breed Grasscutters

Successful grasscutters breeding should be based on the following consdertons:

1. Grasscutter for stocking and the subsequent replacements should be docile, healthy and well-developed.
2. Breeding stock should not be directly from the bush but must be from a reputable and well established grasscutter farm.
3. The live weight records of the grasscutter to be used for breeding should be between 5kg and 8kg.
4. The production records of the mother including mean litter size, mean weaning weight and mean generation intervals should be considered.
5. The area/location should be easily accessible and free from flood.
6. It must be well ventilated, secured, availability of a source of feed and water.
7. The number of grasscutters kept and the objectives of production determine the size of the building or pen. However, the standard is that a family of grasscutters, comprising one adult male and four females should be provided a space of 1.6-2 m2.

Grasscutter Housing

Grasscutter lives in colony, two mature male doesn’t live together. Therefore, start with a male and few females together. A colony should consists of one male and three to four females. Your capacity determine how many colony you wants to start with. A small farmer may start with one or two colony, with the arrangement of one male and 3 females in each colony.

The best way to breed grasscutter is by raising them under intensive system, i.e. keeping them in cages or pens inside a very safe shed. The type, size and quality of housing are important factors. The housing consists of roofed building containing wood with wire hutches. The housing must be well illuminated and properly aerated. The housing must be installed with feed troughs, drinkers, holding cages and transfer cages.

Parent animals i.e. Doe (female) and Buck (male) with four offsprings can also be kept in one hutch. Generally, grasscutter of the same sex and about the same age can be reared together in the house. The general principle of constructing hutches is that the sides and floors should be made of strong wire net. Sliding galvanized trays should be installed under each step unit for separate collection of faeces and urine.

Grasscutters are commonly kept and raised inside rearing pens. It is the production objectives that determine the number of pens to construct. One breeding female per pen is recommended and the surface area per adult grasscutter is 0.2 m2.

Your pen setup could be:

• A pen for adults
• A pen for mating
• A pen for giving birth and feeding the young
• A pen for fattening young grasscutters

Grasscutter don’t like sleeping where they eat! If you are providing them house you must put this factor into consideration – either cage or house, you must provide steeping place and dinning and playing place.

Grasscutter don’t like cold environment.  The rooms or cages where you keep them must neither be too cold nor too hot. Environment that is suitable for human is considered suitable for Grasscutters.

The pen’s construction materials determine the layout of the pens. Brick pens are fixed and unmovable while metal pens are movable.

Using wood, bamboo or straw to construct pens for grasscutters is not recommended because the grasscutters can eat them. Rearing pens can be opened or closed, and when constructing, it is important to have passages to move around between rearing pens.

Grascutter Feeding

The young grasscutter feeds on milk from the Doe until six weeks when it is weaned. The young grasscutter, however, shortly before weaning, nibbles at the feed given to adult grasscutters.

Grasscutter is a herbivorous animals meaning their source of food is basically from the bush, that’s why they are more comfortable in the bush where their foods could easily be found. Their major food is Elephant or Napier grass. They also love Sugar cane and most farmers use sugar cane mainly for their feeding, 

Guinea grass, Gamba grass, Congo grass.

The animal also like herbaceous legumes like Stylo (Stylosanthes gracilis). The root and pitch of oil and coconut palms, bark of the anacardium and fruits such as half ripen pawpaw, plantain, pineapple, mango etc are their delight. Food crops such as groundnut, rice, maize, grain legume, tubers like cassava, sweet potato etc also make part of their food.

They can also be fed with formulated concentrates like pellet as well as other processing by-products like wheat bran, corn bran, soya, oilseed, cotton seed cakes, brewer yeast, grain legume pods, brewers’ grains, maize shucks and cobs, brewer’s yeast etc as feed supplements.

Hygiene and good feeding are the most important factors for successful, profitably Grasscutter farming. You can also fatten the male with broiler’s finisher or broiler starter’s feed to help attain market weight within short period of time.

The common mistake some grasscutter farmers make is given their animals only green forage. That is one of the reasons for the slow growth and low milk production in nursing female grasscutters. On the other hand, if they are not fed with green forage such as grasses or legumes, they would suffer digestive problems. A balanced diet would produce an average weight of 3.5kg and 2.8kg in male and female cane-rats respectively.

Some of the forage and concentrates that grasscutters could be fed with as presented below:

1.  Edible grasses and legumes 
2. Agricultural by-products such as garden wastes, leftover vegetables, ripe or unripe fruits, coconut, leaves, pawpaw and bamboo shoots.
3.  By-products from agricultural processing like Brewers dried grain (BDG), corn bran, wheat bran and groundnut cake (GNC).
4. Tubers and roots: Yam, yam peels, cassava, cassava peels, potato, potato peels, cocoyam and cocoyam peels.
5. Cereals grain such as rice, millet, sorghum and corn
6. Shells like egg shells, oyster shell or bone meal

Grasscutters should be provided with food always. Also, the grasscutters should be fed with fodder 2 hours before feeding them concentrate in the morning and evening. It is also very important to provide water always to the animals. Hence, grassy fodder needs to be dried in the sun for 1-2 days before feeding them to animals.

Concentrate could be combined with fodder. The concentrate can be made up from just one ingredient or several ingredients. It is advisable to alternate the concentrate if single ingredient concentrate is used. If the concentrate is a mix of more than one ingredient, then it could be given to the grasscutters continuously.

Grascutter Mating

A male grasscutter is capable of mating with many females grasscutters in a single period. Female grasscutter should be mated at 6 months old while male should not be mated less than 8 months old. The male should be placed in the mating pen and the female grasscutter is moved from her own pen to the male’s pen. Leave both in the pen for 24 hours.

Note: Don’t move the male to the female pen because it may result to fight and mating may not occur. Also, avoid mating a male that is lighter than the female in weight.

There are two mating options in grasscutter farming:

Permanent mating: Here, the male and female grasscutters are allowed to mate together in the same pen but the young are moved to another pen after they have been weaned.

Temporary mating: Here, the female is placed together with the male until she is pregnant and she is moved to another pen.

Both permanent and temporary matings have their advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of permanent mating

Increased breeding cycle

Disadvantage of permanent mating

Difficult to identify the mother of each offspring

Less control over reproduction

Risk of cannibalism

Risk of exhausting reproductive females

Under-exploitation of the male

Advantages of temporary mating

Clear identification of mother and offspring

Excellent management of breeding process

Reduced risk of adult male killing offspring

Disadvantages of temporary mating

Increased investment (several pens needed)

Need for larger space to house females

Reduced number of litters per female and per year

Gestation

Gestation period in grasscutter is 152 days. After 3 months, the pregnancy will become visible because the abdomen will bulge out when she lies down. The teats will be longer and bigger than in the non-pregnant female. When palpated, one would feel the presence of developing embryos. However, you can carry out pregnancy test on the female grasscutter 4-8eks after mating. To carry out this test, carefully insert a cotton bud into the genital of the female. If it changes color to red, then that grasscutter is pregnant. If there is no discolouration, then the female is not pregnant. Pregnant grasscutters urinate frequently and sometimes there is increase in body temperature.

Birth or Parturition

The act of giving birth in animals is called parturition. About one week to parturition, the female grasscutter will look nervous and restless. Also, her movements within the hutch will be slow and her hair coat will stand erect. The offsprings are born with eyes opened and well developed teeth. At birth, the male grasscutter is always bigger than the female. After the female has delivered, she must be provided with enough feeds and water for adequate milk production.

Weaning Grasscutters

You should wean your newborn grasscutters 40 days after they are born. This is necessary because any extension will make the mother to grow weak due to prolonged breastfeeding. When weaning, separate the males from the females. You can identify a male grasscutter by distancing the genitals and anus, which is twice as large as those in the young females.

The weaned animals can be mated at the age of between seven to eight months from birth. Indefinite mating is expected to have taken place when the weaned male Grasscutter is seven months old and the female is eight months. The indefinite mating period is 140days. But if after 160 days of separation from the male, there is still no sign of pregnancy , then it should be taken back to the male for proper mating. Usually there should also be an extra male that can serve the same purpose.

Health Management in Grascutter Farming

As a grasscutter or cane rat farmer, the health of your anmals should be very important to you because if they come down with diseases, you would be spending additional money to combat those diseases. Of course, your cost of production is increasing. To protect your grasscutters from diseases, the following measures should be done:

1. Inspect grasscutters daily in order to detect any sick animals early.
2. Giving your animals the appropriate feed and taking basic hygiene measures help in reducing potential losses to diseases.
   
3. Avoid rough handling of your animals and unnecessary noise
4. Regularly disinfect the pens, sheds, cages its environment and materials.
   Wash the feeding and drinking troughs twice in a week.
5. Quarantine new grasscutters for 2 weeks before joining them with the
   main stock.
6. Keep feed away from rodents by making the feed store rodent-proof.
7. Give minerals and vitamins supplements bi-weekly. You can also give sweetened lemon juice which has been recognized as an immune system strengthener. To make this juice, get 400 ml of pure lemon juice and add 55 cubes of sugar and mix with 20 litres of water.

Grasscutter Diseases

The following are the most common diseases in grasscutter:

1. Enterotoxaemia: This is caused by the bacterium, Clostridium perfringes. The sign of the disease is the paralysis and pedaling of the hind legs. This disease is prevented by vaccination and keeping the environment clean
2. Staphylococeamia: This disease is caused by bacterium- Staphylococcus aureus. The signs of the disease are discharge from the nostrils and vagina. Antibiotics are used in treating it
3. Coccidiosis: This disease is caused by protozoa of the Eimeria family. Signs of the disease include diarrhoea, loss of appetite, weakness and isolation

Grasscutter Parasites

Worm infestation comes from the feeding of wet contaminated grass and foilage of sugarcane. This can be prevented by avoiding feeding of wet forage and by allowing forage to wilt. Regular deworming should be carried out to get rid of worms. Ticks, lice and flea are common ectoparasites of grasscutter. Dipping and giving dewormers are common practices of removing parasites.

Occurence of Pneumonia in Grasscutter

Pneumonia is caused by the bacterium (Diplococus pneumonate) and it is a common occurence during cold weather. It can be also be caused by inhalation of feed dusts. Grasscutter should be protected against cold weather and should not be fed with dusty feeds.

How to Identify a Sick Grasscutter

To know if a grasscutter is sick, there are some observable signs you will see. These include:

• Loss of appetite
• Dull-looking or matted fur
• Social withdrawal or isolation from others
• Inability to escape capture
• Liquid or soft faeces
• Paralysis
• Coughing
• Inflammation of certain parts of the body
• Abnormally long incisors

See below for some problems and possible solutions

Grasscutter is a fast reproducing animal and starts mating within 7 months after birth. It gives birth twice yearly and produce 4-7 at a time. That means, if you have 100 females that gives birth twice in a year, you would be having 900 to 1,500 in your farm within just a year! Such number will bring you nothing less than N5 Million when they are matured for marketing.

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• Step by step guide to profitable grasscutter farming
• The breed and types of grasscutters to use in starting your farm
• How to feed your grasscutters
• What to feed your grasscutters with so that they grow big
• How to build houses for grasscutter farming
• How to ensure your grasscutters don't fall sick
• How to grow (double and triple) the number of grasscutters on your farm
• How to prevent disease outbreak on your farm 
• The 7 Biggest mistakes to avoid when starting a grasscutter farm
• Frequently asked questions in grasscutter farming and their answers
• Grasscutter farming business plan template

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