Picky eater

Remington is approximately 5 weeks old and a very picky eater! She just loves the Romaine and Arugula from the fridge but scoffs at it if I mix in the ZooMed Grassland or put a pinch of calcium on it. I take her out to graze and get her sunlight daily and she absolutely refuses to eat the grasses and weeds growing in our yard. But boy oh boy, you give her a pile of store bought salad and she'll ravage it! What in the world am I to do about this? I get the ZooMed a little damp so that it will stick to the foods she likes and she'll rub and shake it until most of the ZM is off before eating the leaf. How do I convince little Remi to expand her horizons and try some new foods?

I honest can't help since I have a picky tort who will only eat veggies. I found a great website (but very cautious) http://m.thetortoisetable.org.uk/m/plants_19.asp. I've had a tort for 3 days haha. I've decided to start chopping a mix together to see if that helps?
Ps. Where are you located? I'd love to find prickly pear cactus pads but I'm in MN. do you have that?

mkaykay said:

I honest can't help since I have a picky tort who will only eat veggies. I found a great website (but very cautious) http://m.thetortoisetable.org.uk/m/plants_19.asp. I've had a tort for 3 days haha. I've decided to start chopping a mix together to see if that helps?
Ps. Where are you located? I'd love to find prickly pear cactus pads but I'm in MN. do you have that?

Click to expand...

Cactus I have tons of! lol I'm in Southern AZ.

Also, I've plucked the leaves and grass and tried to mix it in with her food and she'll eat right around them.

I'm having the same problem. I'll switch up bogarts diet everyday but after a day where he gets yummy salads greens he refused to eat the greens from his garden. What a little butthead. I'll take him outside and give him some soaks to work up an appetite and sometimes he comes around. If he keeps acting like this he won't get salad greens day at all!

AZSid said:

Also, I've plucked the leaves and grass and tried to mix it in with her food and she'll eat right around them.

Click to expand...

Cut everything up small and mix it together well. Don't feed too much cactus or they can get diarrhea. It sometimes takes my Russian two or three days of a food before she will eat it. They are stubborn, they don't have to eat every day and they know it.

I agree with the above. For the grassland tortoise food, I add water so it is a mush. Use a very small amount and mix well with the greens. When mine refuse to eat something, I feed the same thing for several days in a row until they eat it.

Jodie said:

I agree with the above. For the grassland tortoise food, I add water so it is a mush. Use a very small amount and mix well with the greens. When mine refuse to eat something, I feed the same thing for several days in a row until they eat it.

Click to expand...

And after that they usually eat it without a problem from then on.

What if the tortoise is already skinny, even though he sometimes doesn't eat all the food in his bowl in a day, do you still basically starve him till he eats what you want him to?

Myroli said:

What if the tortoise is already skinny, even though he sometimes doesn't eat all the food in his bowl in a day, do you still basically starve him till he eats what you want him to?

Click to expand...

You are not starving him, he is refusing to eat. There is a difference. Make sure the temperatures are warm and make sure he is hydrated. I got my tortoise in the middle of winter, I was not familiar with what weeds were safe and they were growing anyway. So I would buy different things at the grocery store, a different thing every week. My tortoise may not eat it the first day or so but after that she did and has ever since. Sometimes you can entice them to eat something new if you squeeze cucumber juice on the greens. Sometimes there will be something they just never eat, that's OK if you have a very diet. For instance, my tortoise will not ever eat collard greens. No matter what I do. But who cares, she eats enough other things that it doesn't matter. The key is variety overtime.
It is important that hatchlings eat properly so you need to do everything you can to get that baby a varied diet. But going without food for a day or two will not hurt them. They're like kids, they'd rather eat the candy than the salad. You have to hold out.

Okaye, Ki eats almost anything except if it has dried out(grass/weeds he didn't finish the day before) or pellet food(I've tried both Mazuri and Zoomed grassland diet) even mixed together or with chopped up spring mix, he won't touch it and since the summer heat has killed most of the grass/weeds in my yard (I live in South Texas) I am having a hard time finding things for him to eat, while I'm still looking at plant nurseries for one that doesn't use pesticides

Time to grow your own. There are tortoise specific seed mixes. Or you can just get seeds for safe plants and grow them.

I have tortoise seed mix but it's too dry, and we get fined for watering too much, plus with winter right around the corner it would all die once the temps drop, but I do plan to start planting them as soon as winter's over, so I just need to get through a few more months

I just ran into this issue, I wasn't sure if I changed her habitat and that is whats causing it. Does anyone know exactly where the best placement for the food dish is? I have it all the way across the tank in the less heated part so that it remains fresh. I upgraded her from a 55 gallon skinny tank to like a 75 gallon huge tank thinking it was the best move and now she isn't really eating much of her greens. She chomps on a minimal amount of mazuri pellets and then calls it good? I feel like I'm doing something wrong here. Basking temp is 100, hot end is 91-93 tapering off to a cool end of 80 degrees. So I have no idea. I have it set on a thermostat so I know everything is regulated and the humidity level is at a steady 83% during the day and rises up to 99% at night with a hot end of 84 and a cool end of 80 degrees. So....What in the world is going on with these torts!?!? I even have catcus, which i chop up and found on the internet for cheap and I sliced up some baby bok choy today with arugula and kale and even some spring mix....all she nibbled on was the marzuri........Is it because she is getting acclimated again..or is there a bigger issues?

Myroli said:

Okaye, Ki eats almost anything except if it has dried out(grass/weeds he didn't finish the day before) or pellet food(I've tried both Mazuri and Zoomed grassland diet) even mixed together or with chopped up spring mix, he won't touch it and since the summer heat has killed most of the grass/weeds in my yard (I live in South Texas) I am having a hard time finding things for him to eat, while I'm still looking at plant nurseries for one that doesn't use pesticides

Click to expand...

Do you moisten the pellets first ? I moisten them so they sort of swell up and are a bit soft to the touch .

Haha I just got my bogart to eat all the greens he doesn't like. A Grape leave, hibiscus leaf, grass, aloe and tuxedo mix all smashed up with mazuri! He gobbled it down so fast. Can't pick out the junk food when it's all smashed up

Speedy-1 said:

Do you moisten the pellets first ? I moisten them so they sort of swell up and are a bit soft to the touch .

Click to expand...

Yes I soak them in warm water till they fall apart, I've chopped up spring mix extremely fine then mixed it with smashed up pellets and he still wiped off the pellet food

Yikes that is a picky eater!

Yet he will eat fresh things, even grass from the day I got him