Turtle eating bedding... Suggestions?

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DVirginiana

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My box turtle has recently started eating her bedding. I've had her for a year now, and she's only started doing this in the last month or so. I think it started when she laid eggs a few weeks ago (which seem to be doing fine luckily).
But several times now, she's passed large pieces of bark bedding. She's still eating and acting fine so I'm guessing there's no internal damage from them, but it's not something I want to risk. It's kind of confusing, since she is never fed in her enclosure and when she's out exploring I've never seen her try to eat non-food items.
Her diet is pretty balanced; about 60% protein (made up of fish and worms), and 50% vegetables (mostly leafy greens like spinach, with some sweet potato and carrot as well). She gets the occasional blueberry as a treat.

I'm about to go looking for some bedding that she either can't eat, or that won't hurt her if she does. Coco-fiber/Eco-earth is not an option for her; her eyes have permanent scarring, and it gets in her eyes and irritates them very quickly even with daily cleanings.
I'm thinking something like carefresh? It's paper, and should be difficult for her to eat... Until I get to the store, she just has an old towel to hide in. After seeing her pass a piece of bark almost 2 inches long, I immediately removed everything.
btw, she does have a hide with sphagnum moss, so she does have a humid area to go to when she wants it.

Any ideas on why she is suddenly doing this and what a good safe bedding would be??
 

Yvonne G

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She's trying to re-gain her supply of minerals that she depleted during egg laying.

Buy some Miner-all. It's made by Sticky Tongue Farms. Sprinkle just a tiny bit over her food daily for a week or so, then you can cut back to every other day, then just once a week.

Cut back on the spinach, and increase the fruit. Spinach binds calcium, which means it gets pooped out instead of used in the body.
 

lisa127

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Do not use Carefresh. It is the most drying substrate out there and totally inappropriate for box turtles. What about just using a very thick layer of damp long fibred new Zealand sphagnum moss? Nothing else added. I've used that for very young boxies and it works well. It's kind of expensive, but a couple of places online have good deals on it.
 

katelyn0974

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The moss is great, all three of my boxies love it. Also coco fiber dirt. My turtles love to bury and stick their heads at me. It's very cute too!


[GREEN HEART]Luna, Shelly & Chomp[GREEN HEART][TURTLE]
 

johnsonnboswell

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I find that a mixture of finished organic compost and coir works well as an indoor substrate. It is cleaner than either one alone, does not dry out too fast, absorbs water spills. The outdoor habitat is pure compost. Both are refreshed with leaf piles. I've tried all kinds of things over the decades.

I agree about the cuttle bone for calcium, and diet. While your proportions of live to vegetable are good enough, you need more variety. Spinach should be fed rarely. All kinds of fruits are good regularly. Think overripe windfalls. Apples, peaches, cherries, mulberries, strawberries, canteloupe. Mushrooms. carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, corn on the cob either cooked or wilted with age. Greens.

Pill bugs, slugs, worms, cooked chicken, hard boiled eggs, shrimp, moths, pinky mice...

Some people make a salad and mix up everything.

In the wild they are opportunistic omnivores eating carrion and anything they can find. Variety is important. So is humidity.
 

DVirginiana

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Right now I have her in a bare 'hospital style' enclosure, with her flower pot of sphagnum moss for a humid hide, her water bath, and the bath towel she had to hide in when I first rescued her and her eyes were too gummy for any substrate at all (she seriously loves to lay on and hide in bath towels. If there's one in the room on her daily 'excursion time' she goes right to it). I just don't feel safe leaving her any bedding for a week or two until I can get this mineral deficiency corrected. Not after some of the pieces she was passing.

I didn't know they could eat hard-boiled egg! She'll love that. Mushrooms too. Can they eat any type that humans normally eat (portabella, shittake, ect)? I happen to have a slug garden in the works for my garters and slug-eating rehabs, so she's getting those as well once they get going.
Now that more things are in season I'll try to expand her diet again. Fresh veggies were off the menu during winter because of an unemployment scare...

I may try a compost mixture sometime this summer. It'd be a good way of assessing the health of her eyes. As of 6 months-post-infection the scarring was still enough to let particles get caught in her eyelids and cause irritation after a day or so. I will admit it's been a pain to try and provide the right humidity and burrowing stuff without using anything particulate.

I'm not on this forum often, so I reply slowly but thanks for the info everybody!


When I say 'fresh veggies' were off the menu, that just meant the really expensive ones btw :) She was still getting the same ratio of protein/greens/root veggies.
 

lisa127

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I feed mine hard boiled egg a couple of times a month. Or I just make a scrambled egg (using water, no milk). I also just feed mushrooms from the grocery store.
 
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