Grocery store produce: In short, avoid grocery store produce when possible. Grocery store greens are not the best tortoise foods. They tend to lack fiber, calcium, and some of them have deleterious compounds in them. If you must use foods from the grocery store, favor endive and escarole as the main staples. Add in cilantro, arugula, collards, turnip and mustard greens, lettuces and many others for variety. You will also need to add some sort of amendment to improve the quality as tortoise food. Calcium is good to add a couple of times per week and soaked horse hay pellets are a good way to add fiber for any species. Soaked ZooMed tortoise pellets of any type are good to add, as is Purina Organic Lay Crumbles for chickens, oddly enough. When possible skip the expensive grocery store greens and use a wide variety of weeds, leaves, flowers, and succulents, that are all free.Lots of my "food factories" have died over the cold spell in the uk. I'm right now buying 'ORGANIC': MIXED LEAF, ROCKET and little gem. Do you know any other shop-bought salads i can usde?
When the weeds aren't growing I use bags of Aldi's crispy salad mix with all the stalky white bits removed, as a base then for variety I add things like lambs lettuce (Tesco/Sainsbury), pak choi leaves, romaine (dark leafy ones not the pale hearts) kale with thick stalks removed. Lidl do a fresh salad trio - with the soil plug it was grown in so you can cut it as you want it, some people plant these and have had success with growing them. The leaves of carrots are good to add and a little grated carrot but not much as they are high in sugar. Morrisons also do a crispy salad with a good mix of leaves. Not all salad bag mixes are good for torts e.g those with beetroot but if you check www.thetortoisetable.org,uk you'll be able to see which ingredients to avoid and which parts of plants to feed.Lots of my "food factories" have died over the cold spell in the uk. I'm right now buying 'ORGANIC': MIXED LEAF, ROCKET and little gem. Do you know any other shop-bought salads i can usde?