Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Greater Cane Rat along with all the Greater Cane Rat containing recipes presented on this site, with 7 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Greater Cane Rat recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Greater Cane Rat as a major wild food ingredient.



Greater Cane Rat (also known as Grasscutter), Thryonomys swinderianus is a very large rodent native to sub-Saharan Africa. (where they are all endemic). These rodents are massive (think Corgi size) and they are a real problem for agricultural crops and they particularly like sugarcane. They are widely culled and sold as 'bushmeat' in both West and Central Africa. The meat is sweet, somewhat reminiscent of rabbit. The Greater Cane Rat is by far the largest and it is the one of most commercial interest in terms of farming.

Their natural habitat is marshy areas around liver margins and lakesides where they live on aquatic grasses. Because they are herbivores and they grow to large size readily the Nigerian government has been funding a domestication program to grow these animals in rural and peri-urban areas. The meat is very low in fat and high in lysine (an amino acid traditionally poor in the African diet, which is based on Maize).

Research carried out over the last two decades has allowed the selection and improvement of stock for captivity and much of the knowledge and techniques for cane rat breeding has been determined from work carried out at the Benin-Germany breeding station, which was established in the mid-1980s. Practical information is now more readily available for farmers interested in cane rat breeding, but training is still advised.

They are not the most prolific of rodent breeders, but their size makes up for that. They also become very tame in contact with humans and recent selective breeding has made them tamer still.

They are heavily-built rodents, with bristly brown fur speckled with yellow or grey. Because of their size they look more like a marsupial than a true mammal (though they are mammals). To picture one think of a cross between a rat and a wombat. They grow to just over 60cm in length and can grow up to 4.5kg in weight. They will live for about 2 years in the wild, up to 4 years in captivity.

Came rats are herbivores, they eat marshland grasses in the wild, but have a distinct predilection for sugarcane. Because of the interest in Cane Rat farming, the UN had made some recommendations on the feeding of the species. In fact the rats can be fed with a range of locally grown foods which include Elephant grass, maize, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, cassava, cabbage and ground bones.

Cane rats are sexually mature at six months of age and the female typically gives birth to a litter of four at least once a year. When farmed cane rats typically have a litter of 5, which are weaned at 9 weeks of age and this encourages the female to have another litter.

They are nocturnal creatures, semi-aquatic in nature and tend to live in the rushes and grasses in the marshy verges of waterways. They live in colonies of up to 20 individuals, led by a single male. They live either in burrows or in nests made from grasses.

In the wild they live either in burrows or in nests made from grass in the reed and grass beds of their natural habitats. When grown commercially they are referred to as 'micro livestock' and are grown either in cages or in pits sunk into the ground. They need plenty of drinking water but can subsist on a diet of elephant grass as long as this is supplemented with starchy tubers and ground up chicken bones. This makes them very low-cost livestock to keep. Indeed, their management is even lower cost than that of chickens. Pioneering work in developing techniques for breeding cane rats in captivity has been going on at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria since 1973. It has been so successful, commercial large-scale rat farming is growing in Southern Nigeria.

When domesticated over several generations and bred for docility the cane rats, which have a reputation for being rather feisty in the wild become as tame and easy to manage as rabbits. Cane rats are available for purchase as exotic pets in the USA. Just be aware that they are naturally gregarious and like many rodents do not like being housed alone.