is this recipe a good staple diet for my hatchling?

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sulcatadude

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I'm a new proud owner of a two month hold sulcata hatchling, and have been lurking on these forums the past couple days learning as much as I can.

I wanted to ask if you guys think my recipe is a good staple diet for my sulcata.

I dump the following into food processor:

1. a handful of pre-soaked mazuri
2. a handful of pre-soaked Zoomed grassland tortoise food
3. a handful of spring mix lettuce (no spinach)
4. 1/2 a pad of prickly pair cactus. The cactus' slime adds "stickiness" to the mix and prevents all the ingredients from separating (and keeps the sulcata from being able to cherry pick the bits it prefers).
5. a pinch of calcium/vitamin D powder.

I finely chop/mince everything in the food processor, and then portion it out into an ice tray for freezing. Then I can pop out a cube each day.

Hopefully this diet covers the bases, and provides a good balance of nutrition and fiber. The grasses are covered with the Zoomed, a little protein from the Mazuri to help with neonatal growth, calcium and vitamin C from the cactus, palatability from the spring mix, and further prevent calcium deficiency with the powder...

What do you guys think?

Is this okay as the daily diet? My Sulcata seems to love it, and I feel like I have enough variety here, but I'm new to all of this.
 

Yvonne G

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Welcome to the Forum, Sulcatadude!

Its not a good idea for new tortoise keepers to try to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. You should stick with what has worked for others with brand new baby tortoises. Please read the "sticky" or important threads at the top of the Sulcata section. You will learn from reading these threads what types of food you should be feeding your baby sulcata.

Once you've gotten your new baby past the important first year and he seems to be thriving, then you can start to experiment with changing out the way you feed him.
 

Jacqui

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It sounds like a nice time saving thing to do for on the go people. I would rotate the greens especially with each batch. That said, the one thing it fails to offer is the ability for the tortoise to have to rip and tear his food. :(
Would cause perhaps problems with the beak getting too long, reduces muscle usage, and would also lower mental stimulation that he would noemally get from eating "solid" foods. If you could do some days with your type of diet and some with solid pieces of a variety of greens/weeds/ even some blooms, I could see it working.
 

sulcatadude

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emysemys said:
Welcome to the Forum, Sulcatadude!

Its not a good idea for new tortoise keepers to try to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. You should stick with what has worked for others with brand new baby tortoises. Please read the "sticky" or important threads at the top of the Sulcata section. You will learn from reading these threads what types of food you should be feeding your baby sulcata.

Once you've gotten your new baby past the important first year and he seems to be thriving, then you can start to experiment with changing out the way you feed him.

I've read the forum, but much of what I read seems to be contradictory. For example, many people here swear by Mazuri, yet it seems to be soy and grain based, lacking any grasses. My impression is that high-protein diets such as Mazuri support faster growth, but that faster growth is not necessarily equivalent to optimal for health.

I was hoping my concoction balances things out, reducing the protein of straight Mazuri, while including the fibrous grasses of zoomed, and the fresh nutrients of cactus/spring mix.

I'm not trying to "reinvent the wheel". Rather, I'm trying to assimilate the wide range of wisdom gathered in these forums.
 

sulcatadude

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Jacqui said:
It sounds like a nice time saving thing to do for on the go people. I would rotate the greens especially with each batch. That said, the one thing it fails to offer is the ability for the tortoise to have to rip and tear his food. :(
Would cause perhaps problems with the beak getting too long, reduces muscle usage, and would also lower mental stimulation that he would noemally get from eating "solid" foods. If you could do some days with your type of diet and some with solid pieces of a variety of greens/weeds/ even some blooms, I could see it working.

Thanks, I hadn't thought about the need to trim the beak. I've seen some pictures of adult sulcatas with overgrowth of the beak - I hadn't considered that could be due to leak of wear against the beak.
 

Tom

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Welcome to the forum Sulcata dude.

There is no "correct" answer to this. It's all going to be opinion based and Yvonne and Jacqui made some good points already. Here are my opinions on the matter:
While I think this would be an okay diet, I don't think it's optimal for many reasons.
1. I don't like to feed Mazuri everyday. I don't like to feed anything every day. I like to offer lots of different things through out the course of a week.
2. They shouldn't have cactus every day.
3. They shouldn't get calcium supplementation every day. It interferes with the absorption of other nutrients and certain fatty acids.
4. The stuff that makes up spring mix is too high in soe nutrients and lacking in other nutrients. Again, it's fine to feed it, but not every day.
5. Yes the zoomed has some dried grass in it, but it has lots of other stuff too. Dried blended hay is not a bad thing, but fresh green growing grass is better for them.
6. The best thing for them to be eating is green grass and a wide assortment of weeds. The addition of some mulberry, hibiscus and grape leaves is a good thing too, but your plan skips all of these things.

All of the things you mentioned are good things as part of a varied diet, but you have omitted the BEST things entirely. I think a better way to utilize the things you mentioned would be to alternate them and feed them individually. In other words, cactus one day, Mazuri another, followed by spring mix with calcium on it, then the zoomed, etc...
 

sulcatadude

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Tom said:
Welcome to the forum Sulcata dude.

There is no "correct" answer to this. It's all going to be opinion based and Yvonne and Jacqui made some good points already. Here are my opinions on the matter:
While I think this would be an okay diet, I don't think it's optimal for many reasons.
1. I don't like to feed Mazuri everyday. I don't like to feed anything every day. I like to offer lots of different things through out the course of a week.
2. They shouldn't have cactus every day.
3. They shouldn't get calcium supplementation every day. It interferes with the absorption of other nutrients and certain fatty acids.
4. The stuff that makes up spring mix is too high in soe nutrients and lacking in other nutrients. Again, it's fine to feed it, but not every day.
5. Yes the zoomed has some dried grass in it, but it has lots of other stuff too. Dried blended hay is not a bad thing, but fresh green growing grass is better for them.
6. The best thing for them to be eating is green grass and a wide assortment of weeds. The addition of some mulberry, hibiscus and grape leaves is a good thing too, but your plan skips all of these things.

All of the things you mentioned are good things as part of a varied diet, but you have omitted the BEST things entirely. I think a better way to utilize the things you mentioned would be to alternate them and feed them individually. In other words, cactus one day, Mazuri another, followed by spring mix with calcium on it, then the zoomed, etc...

Thanks for the very informative answer. Lots of food for thought!
 
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