Indian Star's care and food.

[radhika]

I want to know what kind of care should be given to Indian Star and what can be the good verity of natural food for them (special what I can get in Sub-Tropical climate).

Kindly please help me to find the best food source and care tips for the Indian Stars.

 

[madhura]

Hi, radhika you can feed them with variety of greens salad,collard,musturd,turnip leaves also hibiscus leaves and flower is good for them.Also check out for tortoise care sheet you can google it.Provide them with calcium rich food.

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Radhika:

I took this information from Austin's Turtle Page:


CAPTIVE DIET

Star tortoises are primarily grazers with a preference for various high fiber grasses. They also eat various weeds and flowers. Outdoors during warm weather, you should try to grow plants such as dandelion, bindweed, opuntia cactus, sedum, plantain (the weed, not the banana-like fruit known as plantain), coreopsis, hibiscus, hosta, pansy, petunia, grape vines (feed the leaves, not the fruit), mulberry (the leaves, not the fruit), California poppy, mallow, some vetches, some clovers, and Bermuda grass. It is also possible to grow many wildflowers and weeds indoors and in greenhouses so that your tortoise does not have to rely on grocery store greens, especially in winter. Anything the tortoise might graze on must be pesticide free.

If fed grocery store produce, it should be mixed into a salad and may include endive, escarole, dandelion greens, watercress, frisee, red-leaf lettuce, radicchio, shredded carrot (small amounts), turnip greens (small amounts), collards (small amounts), opuntia, romaine (small amounts), and occasional pumpkin or butternut squash. The mixed salad diet is low in fiber. One way to increase the fiber content is to grind hay (Bermuda, Timothy, and Orchard) into a powder (a coffee grinder works well) and mix that into the greens at every feeding.

 

[radhika]

Thanks a lot for replys.

 

[River14]

Oh thanks for the tips emysemys. Im wondering if fine hay and the occational bite of fruit isnit enough for the dry season if they cannot graze on green grass? We get Chinchilla hay here in Hong Kong from Canada its mostly timothy with added dandelion and marigold flowers and leaf. Think the sun is enough as its very bright and strong in the dry season.