Diet recommendations for Sulcata Tortoise?

[Keria]

I have a 7 year old sulcata tortoise. She mostly eats grass, veggies and monkey chow. After reviewing online, I’m thinking of switching out of monkey chow as apparently it’s too high in protein. But I’m unsure if I should get the Mazuri pellets or grassland pellets, maybe even both. Which one is better? As well, how often would you feed these pellets and how much?

I also saw I should be feeding hay, I’m thinking of buying the orchard hay from Small Pet Select as the reviews and ingredients both seem to be good. What proportions of diets should be done in percents? And should I be supplementing? Feed her once a day or twice a day?

(Also keep in mind, she has access to a very large lawn to munch on all day long)

 

[Tom]

I have a 7 year old sulcata tortoise. She mostly eats grass, veggies and monkey chow. After reviewing online, I’m thinking of switching out of monkey chow as apparently it’s too high in protein. But I’m unsure if I should get the Mazuri pellets or grassland pellets, maybe even both. Which one is better? As well, how often would you feed these pellets and how much?

I also saw I should be feeding hay, I’m thinking of buying the orchard hay from Small Pet Select as the reviews and ingredients both seem to be good. What proportions of diets should be done in percents? And should I be supplementing? Feed her once a day or twice a day?

(Also keep in mind, she has access to a very large lawn to munch on all day long)

Hello and welcome. There is a very wide margin of error for this, and most "reasonable" diet attempts will be met with success for this species.

I would agree that you should quit the monkey chow, but all the rest is good. Go for variety. Lots and lots of variety. Weeds, leaves, flowers, spineless opuntia pads, and lots and lots of grass or grass hay.

Don't get too hung up on percentages. For a sulcata, 0% to 100% grass could all be okay. In the wild, they tend to eat a lot of grass and green plants during the monsoon season, and lots of dried weeds and grasses through the rest of the year. A study on leopards found they at some times of the year, they eat a fair amount of "mammal feces". We are left to speculate on which mammals, but I would guess its a fairly high percentage of ungulate pellets. Based on what I've learned over the years, I would also guess that sulcatas would do this too, though I have no evidence to share from studies on wild ones.

Try for variety. Offer a large percentage of grass and/or grass hay, but mix in lots of good weeds, leaves, flowers, legumes, and even grocery store greens if you want. Either type of Mazuri is great as a supplemental food, and so are the grass land pellets. I use soaked horse hay pellets or cubes (when I can find the right type) to add in fiber and variety to grocery store greens like romaine, endive and escarole.

My summer diet generally consists of the following:
1. Always a flake of orchard grass hay or Bermuda hay available.
2. A four day rotation of the following: Mulberry leaf day, spineless opuntia pad day, Mazuri day, grocery store produce mixed with chopped hay, hay pellets, and "the kitchen sink" day. On occasion, there is also a grape leaf day. I repeat this rotation all summer long from June through October or November.

All year I frequently add whatever other good stuff I can find to mix in, like weeds, hibiscus leaves and flowers, lavatera flowers, clover, alfalfa, squash leaves and blooms, sunflower leaves, and whatever other good stuff I happen to come across.

The winter diet consists of mostly a wide variety of weeds and wild grasses that sprout up when our seasonal winter rains come. I don't have to "feed" them at all for a large part of "winter" as their pens fill up with weeds and grasses. Lots of mallow, sow thistle, filarre, thistle, plantain weeds, dandelion, prickly lettuce, bristly ox tongue, and so many more... Plus hay is always available for adult sulcatas and juveniles over 12 inches.

This thread should help:

For Those Who Have a Young Sulcata...

Over and over I type up and answer diet questions and try to get people feeding the right stuff, but I find that the "norm" is grocery store food. Grocery store food is expensive, a hassle to obtain, and very low on the list of what is best for sulcatas. These tortoises are GRASS eaters. From...

tortoiseforum.org

And much more here:

Info For New People. Please Read This First.

Hello and welcome to tortoiseforum.org! We are all glad you are here! There is no other forum like this anywhere. We have tens of thousands of members from all over the world ranging from kids with their first tortoise to people who have been breeding and keeping high end tortoises since the...

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