The beauty of Grasscutter Farming is that you can actually rear them without spending much money like Poultry and Catfish. The Food Grasscutters eat can be found around your environment. All you need to do is invest a little time to source them out.
Elephant Grass
This Grass is found virtually everywhere in Nigeria. It is the tall Grass that its stem looks like that of sugarcane. This is one of their favourites and i suggest you feed them with this every morning, and add it sometimes to their evening meals. Ensure that your source is clean and so that you don’t feed your Grasscutters with infected Grasses. You can engage little children to help you cut this grass like 3 times in a week. When i started raising my Grasscutters, i used to cut them by myself with my kid brother
But now i outsource it to little school children who live in my house. All they do is that when going to school in the morning, i give them my sack and matchete, once school is over for the day, they cut the grass on their way home.
2. Sugarcane
This is one of Grasscutter’s best food, and where they got the name “Greater cane rat.” Feed a grasscutter with this and it might offer you a kiss (hehehe). All you do is just to cut it into bits and give it to them. But i will give you 2 simple warnings you should adhere to.
A. Be careful while cutting the Sugarcane as you might cut your hand. My left index finger doesn’t bend anymore because i took this law for granted. Well, i guess i learned this the hard way. To avoid this, what i now do is i look for Hausa Mallams that sell sugarcane with wheelbarrows
This is because they have already done the work of cutting it while they sell to their customers. My own is simply to harvest them from his barrow. You can call that rendering useful help. I help him dispose what he sees as waste and he helps me with food (talk about strategic partnership)
2. Don’t feed them much of it. Remember it contains sugar, so you should be careful because if they feed much it on it, it will cause tooth ache for them and they will start avoiding food because of the tooth ache. So feed them with your own discretion.
3. Ugu Stem
Like i said earlier, you can raise your Grasscutters without spending money on feeding, but i suggest to achieve fast growth, add supplements to their feeding plan.
But with their food all around us, you are still in profit mode. In markets when market women sell Ugu, they only sell the leaves and throw away the stem. That is where your profit come in again. Simply help them with the disposal by diposing it in the stomach of your Grasscutters.
Few meters from me is a street market called “Afia Ojoto” (Ojoto Market), i simply take 6 empty rice sacks and share amongst the women who sell Ugu there. After selling there Ugu leaves, they simply park the Ugu Stem into my Sacs and by 9pm in the evening, i simply mobilize my workers we go and bring home the bags.
Grasscutters don’t play with Ugu stem.I consider it their next best food after sugarcane.
4. Maize
Maize is one of their favorite foods. Whenever i come back from the market and start making the sound “chachachachacha” with my mouth, they will rush to feed whatever it is i came back with. Maize can be given to them in 4 ways:
- you can give it to them when it is still fresh like in the above picture.
- You can give them the maize leafs
3. You can feed them with the seeds
D. You can feed them the husk:
I have a lady that roasts maize in my neighborhood, in the evening i drop my bag with her, and when she is through with roasting her maize, she will park some of the husks for me and i pick it up later in at that night.
In My “Grasscutter Farming Ebook guide ”, I outlined more 5 foods that they eat like cassava, Guinea grass etc. Get a copy of the Blueprint and read up the remaining food types.