about to buy pellets

[alita]

is feeding pellets a good idea? I have read that some of you feed Grassland tortoise food from ZooMed , right?
I have been feeding salad mix with escarole, endive and radicchio... should I add the pellets to their diet?
will they accept them? or do they tend to be very picky with pellets? Mine are just babies, so they might get used to it, right?

Also do I wet the pellets ?

thanks in advance

 

[Tom]

I think the ZooMed pellets are a great addition to a tortoises diet. Start small. Just soak one pellet. It will get soft and fall apart in a few seconds. Get your greens for the day and mince them up superfine and spray them with a little water. Then mix up the single mushed pellet very thoroughly with the minced greens. Do this for several days in a row until your tortoise just starts eating everything on his/her plate like it usually does. Then gradually, over a period of weeks, you can slowly add more and more of the new food.

You can use this process to introduce just about any new food. If you just put out a plate of plain pellets, it is likely that your tortoise will not eat it.

 

[Yellow Turtle]

Alita, grassland tortoise food from zoomed is good according to many members, even better than mazuri pellets. But mazuri is not bad at all and I think is cheaper than zoomed brand. So you will hear members here recommend mazuri more than zoomed. Of course you can use both if you wish.

Your salad mix supposed to be good food for them, but you might want to start adding more variety to their menu. Search the basic care for russian tortoise, as there are plenty of them. Regarding the pellets, there are a lot of opinions on feeding pellets. Some members will feed like 50% and some lesser like 20% from their total food. Many members feed pellets like 2 times per week. For me, I feed like 10% for now just as a supplement to my torts. I'm a supporter of slow, stable growth to torts, and feeding pellets seem to boost their growth. A lot of torts will eat mazuri directly when first given, but I heard people have more difficulty feeding zoomed pellets for their torts. So this is what people here would recommend you if your torts won't eat pellets. Cut your greens in small pieces, soak your pellets and mix them well. The greens flavor will stick to the mazuri, so they will try eat it and once they get a taste for its flavor, they will keep eating it in the future. And if they don't you have 2 options. 1st is to keep offering the mix to the torts and usually one day they will eat it. 2nd is the tough love method to starve your torts and they will eventually eat the pellets.

For babies, definitely yes. Soak the pellets with water prior to feeding. They will absorb water fast.

 

[alita]

Thank you so much for your advice Tom and YellowTurtle, very appreciated! Can't wait to get started.

 

[Redstrike]

I use both Zoo Med Forest Tortoise Diet and Mazuri for my redfoots as supplements. I'm more impressed with the ingredients listed in the Zoo Med diets (natural grasses, probiotics, etc.) vs. Mazuri but I can't argue the results I've seen from using Mazuri as a supplement 2-3 times per month.

Bottom line, both are excellent and I like what I've seen for growth using both pellet brands. I tend to favor Zoo Med due to the ingredients list being more natural. I suspect this is associated with the slightly higher price tag. You can get a 15 oz can of Zoo Med for less than $10 on Amazon, so it's still very affordable, in my opinion.

 

[Yellow Turtle]

The only part I love about zoomed is the probiotic thing. Too bad it's not available in my country and amazon won't ship to my country as well...