Keeps eating his substrate

[ustwoandthekids]

My new sulcata which have had just under a week keeps eating the coco fibre worried it will cause him problems, how can I stop this?

 

[JoesMum]

Do you use a coloured lamp? Tortoises have very god colour vision and are attracted to the colour red in particular, but as they aren't the brightest creatures at times they have been known to try eating inedible things coloured by a red heat lamp for example.

Don't feed directly on the substrate either. Put a large piece of flat tile or stone in the enclosure and put the food on that.

 

[cemmons12]

So he is just eating it like its food? I haven't had that problem with either of my kids. I do feed them off the coco coir tho. They both have huge tera cotta dish's and her's is on newspaper and Cooper's is on a thick rubber mat and I keep the coco coir off of them both. Are you feeding your lil one enough so that he won't need to eat the substrate? Just a thought. If nothing else u may need to check into a different substrate. Hope I was of some help to you.

 

[ustwoandthekids]

No he's just got a normal basking light and is fed on slate but is abit of a pain for dragging the substrate a cross it

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He has enough food as doing even when food still left, what other substrate is good for them?

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I am thinking maybe its because he doesn't know what it is as he was on sand before I got him

 

[cemmons12]

I hope someone else can answer that for you. I started off with fine cut timothy hay for substrate, then I switched to coco coir. The hay is good for them to eat tho, but they normally won't eat hay till they get bigger. So that could be an option to look at. I just can't remember what else people use right now. I'm going on 24 hour's of no sleep so the brain is fried! Oh yeah, sand is bad news, so don't go back to that.

 

[stinax182]

well there really is no better substrate than coco coir...if you were to change it, i would simply put wood chips on top of the coco coir...so it can still keep humidity but make sure the chips are too big to eat.

 

[ustwoandthekids]

I have changed his substrate to orchid bark apart from in his hide and one corner where he like to dig as thought would be best to leave some so he can dig, so far he's not tried to eat the orchid bark and its less messy!!