Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[James]

I was just wondering when you give a tortoise fresh fruit do you need to peel off all skin? I have been told that you need to only by one person but it sounds strange.

[mark68]

If a tortoise naturally eats fruit then feeding it to them in captivity is a good idea. But if nobody is peeling it for them in nature why would we do it ? Certainly it is a good idea to wash fruit to remove any pesticide residue, but peeling it for that reason seems over the top to me.

However the use of fruit obviously depends on the species and I don't agree with the advice given sometimes to give Hermanns and similiar toroises up to 10% fruit. It must be very unnatural for them. My Hermanns/Spur thighs get maybe a piece of banana every 6 weeks or so, but other than that it is mostly weeds !

[James]

that is exactly what I thought, out of interest what else do you feed your hermans/spur-thighed? you mentioned weeds, have you tried the tortoise pellets, what do think of these?

[mark68]

We have 17 tortoises yet we haven't bought any food for them for around 3 years (unless you count the very ocassional piece of banana dusted with calcium powder). About 75% of the diet is weeds around 15 diff. species. The rest is home grown, clover (red and white types), endive var. "red dandelion", and spare veg inc spring cabbage/kale, the odd cucumber, tomato, corghette when we have lots spare.

I have never given them pellet foods and think generally they are a poor substitute. I can't see much harm though if they were say 10% of the diet to give variety.

We grow all the above organically. The bags of salad you can buy in supermarkets are sprayed sometimes up to 20 times with pesticides, fungicides etc. Also it saves us a fortune growing our own food for them.

[mark68]

Also forgot to say that recently we started to wash and dry the egg shells from our free range pet chickens. The we grind them into small pieces using a mortar and pestle. We have been putting in around 1/2 a jam jar of this in a pile in their enclosures each week, and they eat it very readily, for calcium. Also if you put in cuttle fish (whole pieces) they will take chunks of that too.

[scrambled legs]

don't feed them fruit at any time. it provides no nutritional value.

never feed pellets, they are a waste of money, although they aren't as bad as fruit.

the only time mine get anything other than tasty weeds is when i have to administer medicine. two bits of thinly sliced cucumber with a paste filling inside goes down a treat!

i don't really bother with cuttlefish, .. isn't it calcium phospherous? i just stick to calcium carbonate and use nutrobal for the little one.

Neil.
_________________
1.2.0. Geochelone pardalis
0.0.1. Testudo marginata
0.1.3. Kinixys homeana
crested geckos, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, cat, jackapoo, poodle, a gazillion fish.

[mark68]

How can you say fruit has no nutritional value ? I think redfoot Tortoise owners would disagree.

Andy Highfield (Tortoise Trust) says cuttlefish is calcium carbonate, which is 40% calcium. Better than calcium phosphate or calcium lactate.

[Bri.]

Yep, cuttlefish is calcium carbonate. Mine love the stuff, and will take it in preference to food dusted with calcium powder.

[scrambled legs]

of course redfoot owners would disagree but i wasn't talking about redfoots, the only tortoises mentioned above were hermanns and spur thighed or 'similar'.

wasn't sure about the cuttlefish, i've been told many things by many people about what type of calcium cuttlefish is.

my tortoises just nibble at natural chalk blocks and also get supplimented correctly. they all turn their noses up at cuttlefish. i've always thought that chalk from the land is better/more natural than something from the sea but that is where we all differ.

this original post was about fruit and whether to peel it or not.

ok.
there is no need to feed a med tort fruit. there are more beneficial luxuries.

redfoots are an exeption, i've no experience of owning redfoots apart from incubating some redfoot eggs last year. they love a certain percentage of fruit in their diet.

Neil
_________________
1.2.0. Geochelone pardalis
0.0.1. Testudo marginata
0.1.3. Kinixys homeana
crested geckos, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, cat, jackapoo, poodle, a gazillion fish.

[mark68]

My point was that fruit has nutritious value, not as you state. It's just that it isn't necessarily good for an animal that naturally would eat very little fruit. We still don't know from this thread exactly what species James has, since he hasn't told us. I assume it is probably a spur thigh or hermanns, but I am not sure.

I think we would agree that the diet of tortoises should be ideally as natural as possible. Chalk blocks sound good, and I wouldn't assume we would differ on that. I would guess that in the wild tortoises would find egg shells and old snail shells as well as obtaining calcium from the plants they eat. Of course also maybe bits of stone/rock they know contain calcium. I think I read somewhere that tortoises are rarely found in Iberia because the soil is generally acid and the tortoises struggle to find enough calcium. The good thing about chalk blocks or cuttlefish is that they probably can choose to eat more when there bodies tell them they need it.