Russian eating from backyard. bad?

[wosman]

Hello gang

My russian tortoise, mango, loves playing outside. she tends to not do much indoors, but once outside she will never stop moving around and will be sniffing everything in site.

I can trust her to never eat anything other than what I put in her food dish, but today i saw her eat an entire weed from our backyard. I immediately stopped her for two reasons:

1. I don't know if my parents use pesticides to kill the weeds
2. i saw some itty bitty bugs on the weeds which mango was eating.

now number 1 I can confirm in a few hours when my parents get home, although im 98% sure we don't use any chemical at all on our lawn/backyard.

as for number 2..can something bad happens if she ate one of the little bugs accidentally with the weeds ?


Thanks for any help!

 

[Jacqui]

I would say to stop worrying. I am sure all our tortoises outside eat a lot of things we never know of or even imagine. Most bugs are safe any how. Hope your folks come back with a none usage of chemicals, fertilizers, or an animal on any ivermectin type product, so you can feel easier about her eating outside.

 

[tyler0912]

Just a bit of extra protein!

 

[dmmj]

you can usually tell when pesticides or weed killer is used, so I would not worry to much,but it is better to get confirmation on that so your worries can be laid to rest, as for the bugs I feed my russians hibiscus leaves and flowers , and they usually have aphids on them, so while you don't want a bug heavy diet for russians if they eat some here or there when eating I don't think it will hurt.

 

[wosman]

thanks for the help everyone gang!

I found out no pesticides were used so I should be good to let her venture.

 

[GeoTerraTestudo]

As long as there are no pesticides or herbicides in your backyard, letting your tortoise forage on its own is a great idea. That way they get their sunshine and exercise on nice days, and they get a variety fresh greens in their diet.

As for bugs crawling on the leaves, no worries. Russian tortoises, like most tortoises (except for a few tropical species) are herbivorous, but that doesn't mean that they can't incidentally ingest invertebrates every now and then. And if you find them actually feeding on snails from time to time, then that's actually a good thing because the calcium in a snail's shell is good for a tortoise's skeleton.