# Wild garlic for tortoises?



## ZEROPILOT (Sep 27, 2016)

A while ago, I mentioned that folks in the large tropical fish trade often use garlic to stimulate the appetite in a fish that will not eat and asked if it might work for a tortoise.
I was told by a couple of members that garlic was actually toxic for reptiles, etc. So I quickly dropped the issue. However, I see wild garlic on a few food lists for tortoises and I happen to have some growing in my garden. (The flowering type)
Is this different than the garlic that we all think of as food? And is wild garlic truly safe? Thanks.


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## JoesMum (Sep 27, 2016)

TTT doesn't recommend it because it lumps all plants with bulbs in the same do not feed bracket. And then it says that Horsfields eat it in the wild!

TTT also seems overly concerned that it could be easily confused with other poisonous plants... although the smell is a massive give-away!


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## Anyfoot (Sep 27, 2016)

ZEROPILOT said:


> A while ago, I mentioned that folks in the large tropical fish trade often use garlic to stimulate the appetite in a fish that will not eat and asked if it might work for a tortoise.
> I was told by a couple of members that garlic was actually toxic for reptiles, etc. So I quickly dropped the issue. However, I see wild garlic on a few food lists for tortoises and I happen to have some growing in my garden. (The flowering type)
> Is this different than the garlic that we all think of as food? And is wild garlic truly safe? Thanks.


I have wild garlic in my outdoor enclosure, well I used to until the reds devoured it. They love it. Hopefully next year it will come back with vengeance, it spreads like wildfire.
They never ate the actual flowers though, just foliage.


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## Anyfoot (Sep 27, 2016)

I fed it juveniles too, never had an issue.


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## JoesMum (Sep 27, 2016)

I think it's right up there with buttercups. If creeping buttercups killed tortoises then Joe would have died decades ago. 

I don't pick them for him... he grazes them out of the lawn. If it were possible to eradicate them I would simply because they smother the grass; Joes loves them but not enough to control them. 

I won't actually recommend buttercups as food as people get very het up about it. However, if people get concerned about them in a large outdoor enclosure/lawn then I explain what happens here!


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## ZEROPILOT (Sep 27, 2016)

Now that we are discussing it. My tortoises used to eat all of the day lillies that grow every Easter time back when the roamed the yard. They grow from bulbs.


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## Anyfoot (Sep 27, 2016)

ZEROPILOT said:


> Now that we are discussing it. My tortoises used to eat all of the day lillies that grow every Easter time back when the roamed the yard. They grow from bulbs.


I caught one of mine eating tulip petals that had blown into their patch earlier in the year. Also there is a weed that they love that is apparently toxic, keeps sprouting up all over the garden, when I see them I pull em out. Ill get a photo, looks like clover but grows high.


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## wellington (Sep 27, 2016)

ZEROPILOT said:


> Now that we are discussing it. My tortoises used to eat all of the day lillies that grow every Easter time back when the roamed the yard. They grow from bulbs.


I always seen day Lillies as safe. It's other Lillies that are not. Easter Lillie is one that's not safe. The day Lillies I purposely planted for my torts are yellow, but they don't eat, darn it are these pictured. All the others are not suppose to be fed.


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## RosemaryDW (Sep 27, 2016)

ZEROPILOT said:


> Is this different than the garlic that we all think of as food? And is wild garlic truly safe? Thanks.



Wild garlic is from the same plant family as all garlic: allium. 

I had the same response to the Tortoise Table info as Joe's Mum did. Alliums are bad: wild horsefields eat alliums.  I like to be cautious but there are times when I find the Tortoise Table a bit on the extreme side. If I can find information indicating something is s part of the wild diet or hear from long-term keepers that they feed it, I'll consider it.

Our Russian got two or three garlic scapes this year (scapes are like stems, from regular garlic). She really enjoyed them. I wouldn't let her subsist entirely on them but I can say that about every food she gets.


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