Feeding Schedule & Amount

[Miles&Marvin]

Hi All,

My 4 year old 65 lb little gal is thriving here in SoCal. Just wondering what others are doing for a feeding schedule and amount for a Sulcata of this size/age. Right now we do every other day an amount the size of her shell. Dandelions, green leaf, romaine, are her favs. Just seems a bit more hungry now that the sun is shining and it’s warm.
Thanks

 

[Tom]

They should be allowed to eat as much as they want of the right foods every day. Tortoises are grazers and need free access to food all day.

What are the right foods? Well... grocery store greens should be a last resort when you can't find anything better. Grass should be the bulk of the diet. It takes a good sized yard or pasture to grow enough grass for an adult sulcata. Most of us supplement with dried grass hay because it's cheap, easy and good. Orchard grass hay works best, but Bermuda hay or Teff hay are also good. Introduce hay slowly. Chop up the greens, then chop up the hay by the handful with scissors and soak it. After an hour or two of soaking, mix the chopped hay with the chopped greens. Start this process with hardly any at all and build up more and more over a period of weeks and months.

Another method is to simply feed the tortoise all of its regular food on a bed of grass hay. Scatter some hay on your feeding tray, and put the greens on top of it.

In addition to hay or grass, look for lots of weeds, spineless opuntia pads, mulberry, grape, lavatera, rose of Sharon, and hibiscus leaves and flowers. I feed tons of sow thistle, thistle, milk thistle, clover, mallow, fillaree, broadleaf or narrow leaf plantain, and many more this time of year. Buying food at the grocery store is not a great way to feed a tortoise. Grocery store greens need to be amended to add fiber, calcium and nutrition. You can use chopped soaked hay, or soaked horse hay pellets to add fiber, RepCal to add calcium, and look for dried leaf option to mix in from Tortoisesupply.com and Kapidolofarms.com.

Another good way to round out their diet is to add in some Mazuri pellets once or twice a week. You can use the original 5M21 formula, or the newer LS version, or both.

Next item is housing. Loose in the house is not safe and cannot be made safe. This tortoise needs to have a large outdoor pen, or the whole yard, and a properly heated insulated night house. Here are two night house examples. I live up in SCV north of you, and this method works great up here even with our temperature extremes. It will work even better for you.

Single Tortoise Night Box

I like my larger tortoises to live outside full time. My climate permits this year round with a little help. For people who live where it snows all winter, this type of box is still good for warmer weather, getting them out earlier in Spring, and keeping them out a bit later into fall. You'll...

tortoiseforum.org

Double Door Night Box

As the years have gone by and I build more of these boxes, I learn more and more each time. This one is the latest and I incorporated everything I've learned over the years. I also tried to take lots of pics so I can explain in more detail some of what is going on. It will take multiple posts to...

tortoiseforum.org

Finally, tortoises and dogs should never be left together. Just two days ago I heard about yet another tortoise that was chewed up and killed by a loving friendly family dog. The dog showed no interest in the tortoise initially so they thought it was A-okay, right up until they realized it wasn't. Your dog in the picture might not be able to kill a large tortoise, but it can still permanently maul and disfigure it. So many people make this mistake. Please don't be one of them. I've seen t so many times over the years. You don't have to learn this the hard way at the expense of your tortoise. I am a professional dog trainer. There are no exceptions to this rule. Your dog isn't special and different than every other dog. They ALL have these instincts in them. Keep them separated. The tortoise should have its own area where the dog doesn't have access.

I say these things to be helpful. I've seen so many disasters from these common mistakes. I don't want to see these disasters ever again. If no one tells you what is wrong, you won't know what to fix. Feel free to argue your points and question any of this. I'm happy to explain further. My only goal is to help your tortoise thrive and avoid common pitfalls.

Much of the above is explained here. I hadn't made this thread when you joined the forum, so you probably haven't seen it. There is lots of helpful info 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...

tortoiseforum.org

 

[wellington]

Feed every day! Follow Toms post. Tortoises should not and do not need to go a day without food, they wouldn't skip eating in the wild.

 

[Renee_H]

I have a leopard not a sulcata but they eat a similar diet. Over the past few years my style of feeding has evolved a lot. My girl lives outside 365 door open am and closed pm. Am when I open her door I grab handfuls of growing stuff and just litter it around the grassy part of her enclosure. Primarily cactus pads, rose leaves (diff varieties) hibiscus, grape leaves, and moringa. I also grow weeds and grab those from her less explored areas of her enclosure. Then when she comes out she eats these things up off the grass and eats grass in the process. I do buy a pack of romaine each week when I go to Costco and mist it with water and sprinkle on some tortoise food fixer rip it up and scatter that around. By the time I get home from work she’s cleaned the place up and it’s all gone. lol

 

[Josh]

Feed every day! Follow Toms post. Tortoises should not and do not need to go a day without food, they would skip eating in the wild.

i think barb probably meant "wouldn't skip eating" here

 

[wellington]

i think barb probably meant "wouldn't skip eating" here

Thanks Josh, yes I did and I corrected it.

 

[Josh]

@Tom is the one who flagged it but I kept thinking it was a new report so instead of waiting, I replied

 

[Tom]

@Tom is the one who flagged it but I kept thinking it was a new report so instead of waiting, I replied

I usually appeal to Barb to help me correct my spelling errors after my time to edit has run out.