too much green grass?

[marcy4hope]

i live in missouri and my tort has been inside all winter. i am gradually taking her outside now a little each day to get some sun and eat grass now that it's growing in the yard. we have a large wooden/wire cage outdoors where we can keep her penned in. we are always outside with her while she's in there. we are working on an outdoor enclosure to move her outdoors this summer. (she's 2 1/2 years old, weighs 13-14 pounds.)

i've noticed that when i have my sullie outdoors for an hour or so, that the next day she will sleep a lot and not eat. the first time this happened, i gave her a good long soak and mixed her up some mazuri. she only took a few bites and went back to "bed". she did drink quite a bit though and came out to bask under her heat lamp quite a bit. i gave her another good long soak the next day. it took a couple days, but she finally came around and started eating again.

hubby had her outside yesterday for 3 hours and he called me today and said she's been sleeping all day now and hasn't eaten or drank. i'm not too worried, since she's done this a couple times recently, but i'm wondering: is this possibly because she's eating a lot of grass now and had been eating grocery store greens all winter?

 

[Yvonne G]

I had the same problem with my leopard tortoise group. Over the winter their grass is usually dormant, so they're eating dead, yellow blades of grass supplemented occasionally with whatever weeds I could find. Then I planted a pasture mix in their yard, keeping them inside for a month while the grass grew. When I put them back out, the grass was about 6" tall, lush and green...full of moisture.

The poops that I've been picking up in their yard are pretty messy. They hold shape, but are very wet and ugly/smelly.

This should not be harmful to the tortoise, but it sounds like maybe in your case it was too much all at one time. I never noticed any difference in my tortoises' attitude.

Give her a couple of nice warm soaks and see if this doesn't perk her up a bit.

 

[Tom]

What you are seeing sounds totally normal. I see the same thing with some of mine. It is more prevalent when they are introduced to a new area or a new enclosure, which makes me think it is also somewhat stress related. Tortoises are creatures of habit and they don't like new enclosures. I think you will see this less once you have an established large enclosure that the tortoise goes into every day, day after day. They like a routine.

They tend to run around a lot outside and I think the natural lighting spectrum offered by real sunshine gets them very stimulated. Then when they come back inside to a relatively dark (compared to full sunlight) boring enclosure they feel tired and un-stimulated. Fullness might also be a factor in that they tend to eat a lot more when they are out in the great outdoors under real sunshine lighting conditions.

 

[marcy4hope]

THANKS!!! i feel a lot better about it. she's totally fine otherwise. my hubby laughs, because the first time she did this, i was also sick for 2 days from allergies (since i was outside with her the whole time). he says she's like my pet dog and knows when i don't feel good. thanks a lot!