Cottontails will forage on domestic crops, even the bark of fruit trees. They get most of their water from either the plants they eat or dew that forms on the plants. Other browsers, like deer or bighorn, chew the tips and create a ragged edges. Cottontails are coprophagic, meaning they eat their own feces. Since grass is difficult to digest, the rabbits eat the first-formed set of pellets after a meal.
Additional nutrition is extracted during the second digestive process.
Pellets from the second set are very hard, fibrous and lack nutritive value. When alarmed, a cottontail can run up to twenty miles per hour in a zigzag pattern to escape predators. Often, the cottontail runs to a protective location like a burrow or thicket. A cottontail may also freeze when danger lurks, and scrunch down to blend into its surroundings. When temperatures climb above eighty degrees Fahrenheit, the cottontails' activity level decreases significantly.