Feeding schdule

M stanek

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I feed my two torts this much lettuce with repashy superfood. Each tort gets their own food dish cuz they don’t like to share. How many times a day should I be feeding them this much?
 

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jsheffield

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I feed mine a handful of greens about the size of their shell everyday with some dried plants and flowers sprinkled over it, occasionally supplementing with zoo med grassland kibble and butternut squash.

Jamie
 

Toddrickfl1

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I feed one time in the morning, enough that there's leftovers at the end of the day.
 

MichaelL

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Now that there is so much free time during the quarantine, I have more time to get an even bigger variety of weeds from outside. At around 10-11 am when the russians are still basking outside, yet not too hot for them to go back into the burrows, I get a bucket and walk around almost all of our five acres and get TONS of weeds. One of my favorite things about tortoises. You can feed them with almost no cost, and have fun while you're at it. I get about 10-15 different plants/weeds and rip them up and mix them together so the russians can't pick out their favorites. Some of these include hawksbit, thistle, clover, florida pusley, hibiscus, rose, dandelion, mulberry, plantain, and tons more. I also get several types of flowers and tear those up too and add to the heaping green mix. The flowers include hawksbit, hibiscus, dandelion, clover, and rose. They get to eat the greens all day, coming in and out of the shade to return to feast.

Sorry for the rant haha, but I just give a heap of food once at around 10-11 in the morning. There are usually some scraps left over at the end of the day that I dump out, but yeah.
 

Tom

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I feed my two torts this much lettuce with repashy superfood. Each tort gets their own food dish cuz they don’t like to share. How many times a day should I be feeding them this much?
First and foremost, tortoises should never be housed in pairs. Russians are probably the worst offenders at this. They need their own enclosures BEFORE one of them loses an eye or dies.

Second: Lettuce is not a good diet. It lacks fiber, calcium and doesn't not meet their nutritional needs. Adding Repashy doesn't help much, and they shouldn't be getting powdered supplements with every meal. If you must use grocery store food and can't find anything better, you will need to amend it by adding something with fiber. Soaked ZooMed grassland pellets work. Soaked horse hay cubes. Herbal Hay from tortoisesupply.com is awesome, and Will @Kapidolo Farms has all sorts of dried leaves that you can add in for fiber and variety. Also if you must use grocery store foods, favor endive and escarole and these are the most weed like. Add in cilantro, arugula and a wide variety of other greens for variety.

Now to finally answer your original question: Tortoises are grazers. They should have as much of the right foods at they want all day. They should be able to eat from a big pile, walk away and bask or explore, and come back later and graze some more. The right foods are broadleaf weeds, leaves and flowers of the right types.
 
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