What to feed

[bonsai tortoise]

The spring and summer is great for weeds and I rarely need to buy anything for my torts. I just pick what I need outside. However once late fall and winter arrives I need to resort to store bought. I try my best not to get prepackaged spring mix because I can rarely find it fresh enough. There's usually some browned out slimey lettuce in there. I mix it up between fresh red leaf lettuce, dandelions, rodicchio, mustard, parsley, and some kale. Then I'll supplement with Mazzuri. Once everything starts coming back in the spring I revert back to weed pulling.

 

[Lindsay Chen]

I disagree with russian/sulcata/tortoise. Not to call you out, but I find that my Greek (and Testudo in general) doesn't tend to eat grass that much. What they do eat is broadleaf weeds. For this, I recommend mallow, plantain, red clover, white clover, dichondra or kidney weed, chickory, dandelion, hibiscus (leaves and flowers), althea (flowers), flowering maple or Chinese lantern (flowers), mulberry (preferably fruitless; the fruit is very high in sugar, which can cause diarrhea), optunia cactus (the spineless kind is preferable), and others. There are many good posts in the tortoise diet forum. Basically, to keep a tortoise, you have to become a gardener. There's just no way around it, unfortunately. You can supplement the diet with spring mix, and you can dry some of the herbs mentioned before for the winter months. If you have access to a green house, this will prove invaluable during winter. I live in south Texas, where the winters are mild but it rains with some frequency. I divert the rain water into an irrigation system for my winter feed, but my collection is a large one, and invariably, I have to resort to supplemental spring mix feeding during the early spring when I'm allowing my garden to recover.

T.G.

Where do u get the food that u listed ?

 

[tglazie]

Amazon.com and organic nurseries. I went into detail regarding this question in proceeding posts on this thread.

T.G.