Feeding our Sulcata

[Miles&Marvin]

Hi, long time reader and thanks everyone for all the great advice. I have a question about our 20 month old Sulcata. She’s great very happy, good water, sleeper. Plays all day in the yard. I’m wondering just how much to feed her. At her last check up in April she weighted 3lbs. See food below. She eats the entire board everyday.
Thanks

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

It's really hard to overfeed a tortoise (unless it's a bag of Mazuri pellets a day). If she deals with a whole food plate, you may try to give more. By the end of the day only little bits should be left.

Proper varying diet is maybe more important than amounts of food. Lettuce and cucumbers are not very nutritious for example.

Maybe you've seen this care sheet already (if not it's a great reading): https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/the-best-way-to-raise-a-sulcata-leopard-or-star-tortoise.181497/

And yes, she's very beatiful tortoise!

 

[Miles&Marvin]

It's really hard to overfeed a tortoise (unless it's a bag of Mazuri pellets a day). If she deals with a whole food plate, you may try to give more. By the end of the day only little bits should be left.

Proper varying diet is maybe more important than amounts of food. Lettuce and cucumbers are not very nutritious for example.

Maybe you've seen this care sheet already (if not it's a great reading): https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/the-best-way-to-raise-a-sulcata-leopard-or-star-tortoise.181497/

And yes, she's very beatiful tortoise!

Thanks Alex, appreciate the response.

 

[Tom]

Hi, long time reader and thanks everyone for all the great advice. I have a question about our 20 month old Sulcata. She’s great very happy, good water, sleeper. Plays all day in the yard. I’m wondering just how much to feed her. At her last check up in April she weighted 3lbs. See food below. She eats the entire board everyday.
Thanks

Tortoises are grazers. They should be allowed to eat as much of the right foods as they want all day every day. Lettuce is not the right food. You need to be providing grass, weeds, leaves, flowers and opuntia pads. Pretty soon, when the tortoise reaches around 12 inches, you can begin to introduce orchard grass hay to the diet too.

Grape leaves, mulberry leaves, hibiscus leaves, spineless opuntia pads, and a huge assortment of weeds, along with the grass that is in the pictures is what your tortoise should be eating.

More here:

The Best Way To Raise A Sulcata, Leopard, Or Star Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. Babies hatch during the...

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