Primarily consume grasses (from Klingel 2013 unless otherwise noted)
- >90% of diet consists of grasses
- 50 species of grasses eaten
- Species consumed typically related to relative abundance; though some preferences noted (Ben-Shahar 1991)
- Dietary staples: Panicum maximum, Themeda triandra, Cynodon dactylon, and Eragrostis superba
- Stems, sheaths, leaves, and seeds preferentially used
- Rhizomes and corms taken in extremely dry periods (Pienaar 1963)
- Herbs
- Eaten inadvertently (Klingel 2013 unless otherwise noted)
Diet when in famine (from Hack et al. 2002 unless otherwise noted)
- Will eat bark from trees and other coarse vegetation (Estes 2012)
- Hind-gut digestion enables more rapid processing of food
- Facilitates survival when diet is of low nutritional value
- Other ruminants lack this capability
- Vegetation passes through the digestive tract in 30-45 hours, up to 45% faster than in the cow (Estes 2012)