What should I be feeding western hermanns tortoise?
- Thread starter Zeus_Care
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Ridicchio, endive, arugula, water cress, escarole bok choy, frisee, some stores carry dandelion and cactus pads.
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.
Feeding:
So much contradictory info on this subject. Its simple. What do they eat in the wild. Grass, weeds, leaves, flowers, and succulents. Feed them a huge variety of these things, and you'll have a healthy tortoise. All of these species are very adaptable when it comes to diet and there is a very large margin of error, and many ways to do it right. What if you don't have this sort of "natural" tortoise food available for part of each year because you are in the snow? You will have no choice but to buy grocery store food. What's wrong with grocery store food? It tends to lack fiber, some items are low in calcium or have a poor calcium to phosphorous ratio, and some items have deleterious compounds in them. All of these short comings can be improved with some simple supplementation and amendments. A pinch of calcium two times per week will help fix that problem. You can also leave cuttle bone in the enclosure, so your tortoise can self-regulate its own calcium intake. What about fiber? Soaked horse hay pellets, soaked ZooMed Grassland pellets, Mazuri tortoise chow, "Salad style", "Herbal Hay" both from @TylerStewart and his lovely wife Sarah at Tortoisesupply.com, or many of the dried plants and leaves available from Will @Kapidolo Farms. If you must use grocery store foods, favor endive and escarole as your main staples. Add in arugula, cilantro, kale, collard, mustard and turnip greens, squash leaves, spring mix, romaine, green or red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, water cress, carrot tops, celery tops, bok choy, and whatever other greens you can find. If you mix in some of the aforementioned amendments, these grocery store foods will offer plants of variety and fiber and be able to meet your tortoises nutritional needs just fine. I find it preferable to grab a few grapevine or mulberry leaves, or a handful of mallow and clover, or some broadleaf plantain leaves and some grass, but with the right additions, grocery store stuff is fine too. Grow your own stuff, or find it around you when possible. Tyler and Sarah also sell a fantastic Testudo seed mix that is great for ALL tortoise species and also super easy to grow in pots, trays, raised garden beds, or in outdoor tortoise enclosures. When that isn't possible, add a wide variety of good stuff to your grocery store greens to make them better.
Supplements:
I recommend you keep cuttle bone available all the time. Some never use it and some munch on it regularly. Some of mine will go months without touching it, and then suddenly eat the whole thing in a day or two. A great diet is paramount, but it is still a good idea to give them some extra calcium regularly. I use a tiny pinch of RepCal or ZooMed plain old calcium carbonate twice a week. Much discussion has been given to whether or not they need D3 in their calcium supplement. Personally, I don't think it matters. Every tortoise should be getting adequate UV exposure one way or another, so they should be able to make their own D3. I also like to use a mineral supplement. "MinerAll" is my current brand of choice. It seems to help those tortoises that like to swallow pebbles and rocks. It is speculated that some tortoise eat rocks or substrate due to a mineral deficiency or imbalance. Whatever the reason, "MinerAll" seems to stop it or prevent it. Finally, I like to use a reptile vitamin supplement once a week, to round out any hidden deficiencies that may be in my diet over the course of a year.
OP is in the U.K. and doesn't necessarily have access to the foods we do in North America.
Zeus Care I don't rely on this website for much but in terms of finding things that may be available near you take a look at the Tortoise Table which is U.K. focused. I'd look at the sections on houseplants for things you might already have around and the one on wild plants. https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/plant-database/.
You can feed lamb's lettuce and watercress. You can also feed a bit of any squash, a small wedge of sweet potato, a single mushroom, a slice of courgette or marrow, a tiny bit of carrot, the top of a cucumber, a green bean or a pea pod, a bit of broccoli. Not all the time or as the primary diet but rotate them in and out maybe a couple of times a week. They will bump fiber a bit or help fill things out in other ways.
if you don't have access to wild plants or high-fiber plants such as flowering maple in your garden you should likely consider offering some pellet food to be sure of fiber intake, as it's so important.
Zeus Care I don't rely on this website for much but in terms of finding things that may be available near you take a look at the Tortoise Table which is U.K. focused. I'd look at the sections on houseplants for things you might already have around and the one on wild plants. https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/plant-database/.
You can feed lamb's lettuce and watercress. You can also feed a bit of any squash, a small wedge of sweet potato, a single mushroom, a slice of courgette or marrow, a tiny bit of carrot, the top of a cucumber, a green bean or a pea pod, a bit of broccoli. Not all the time or as the primary diet but rotate them in and out maybe a couple of times a week. They will bump fiber a bit or help fill things out in other ways.
if you don't have access to wild plants or high-fiber plants such as flowering maple in your garden you should likely consider offering some pellet food to be sure of fiber intake, as it's so important.
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.
There are also pellets you could try but they shouldn't be the main food and need hydrating. My tort loves opuntia cactus which I order on line but feed sparingly, as it can act as a laxative, and I slice thin slithers with a veg peeler to avoid choking on chunks. Hope that helps get you through the winter.
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