During the day, cottontails may rest in the shades of large shrubs, in burrows or within thickets. In the hot months of summer, they conserve moisture and energy by avoiding activity during the hot, dry daylight hours. 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.