winter feeding/freezeing

[biglove4bigtorts]

I know many members with climate extremes are forced to feed store-bought fare to thier torts, but I want to avoid this as much as possible. Does anyone have experience or know which edible weeds and plants can be frozed and thawed for torts to eat later, without turning to mush? I have TONS of food now and would love to continue the nutrition and variety into the cold months, when I can't harvest from the garden.

 

[egyptiandan]

I'm pretty sure everything weed wise will turn to mush once unfrozen. The only thing you can do is dry the weeds and all tortoises won't be fond of the dried weeds. You can though make your own TNT mix with crushed dried weeds that you sprinkle on the store bought greens during the winter.

Danny

 

[Terry Allan Hall]

Thawed frozen weeds/greens will be slightly mushy (about the consistency of cooked spinach, in most cases), and my torts love it. Easy to add calcium/vitamin powder to, as well.

I mix a variety of weeds/greens, then freeze them in labeled snack-sized zip-locks (I have small torts...adjust the size of the bags to the size of the tort, of course), so as to be able to offer different thngs/mixtures every couple days.

Around here, I can harvest sow-thistle, dandelions, canary-grass, mouse-ear chickweed, prickly pear pads and pears, chickory, red clover, wild geranium, and yaupon...probably other things, as well, but I'm still learning to ID the flora of North Texas.

And, as Dan points out, dried weeds, crumbled up and mixed in with thawed or fresh greens/weeds, is good, too.

 

[Madkins007]

I know he is controversial, but Andy Highfield of TortoiseTrust.org is of the opinion that frozen food's cell walls are changed enough to make it less nutritious to the tortoise. I don't know any research behind that, but he claims poor fiber, diarrhea, etc. from it.

I would dry the most nutritious of the weeds and use them as a supplement.

By the way, Alton Brown of Good Eats (my fave cooking show) makes a food dryer by laying the food on corrugated furnace filters, stacking a few of these together, and bungee cording them to a fan to blow air over them for a couple days. Of course, he is making jerky at the time, but if it works for jerky, it should work for this, maybe?

 

[Kristina]

Yes, frozen food does change nutritionally. Mostly Vitamin B and thiamine are lost through the freezing process. That can be helped by feeding a good multivitamin.

As far as freezing, what I do is to dry the weeds and greens PARTIALLY in my oven, just on a cookie sheet, set on low. Then I freeze them, and they will actually thaw out to be very close to original consistency. I also do as Danny said, and make my own version of "TNT," using most of the same ingredients that TNT uses. For the most nutrition retention, dry your greens in a cool, dark place, away from sunlight.

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As far as fiber content being lost (which I was having a hard time believing,) this is what I found.

"When it comes to fruits and vegetables, fresh, frozen, and canned all contain the same amounts of fiber. "

http://www.everydayhealth.com/specialreport/heart-health/fiber-basics.aspx

That was the only reference that I could find.