dmmj said:I second that.turtlemann2 said:eww yuck grape fruit...
third!
cheese?
- Thread starter jojodesca
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third!
Bump - As mentioned above, humans are really the only mammals in the world to continue eating dairy into adulthood, and of course, being reptiles, turtles don't naturally eat dairy at all.
However, today we had a veterinarian and vet tech come and make a house call to give our cat a checkup. Their practice deals with cats and dogs, not reptiles, but when they saw my Russian tortoises, they chatted with my wife and me about them for a while. At one point, the vet tech surprised me by saying that, in the past when she had worked with tortoises, she used to feed them yogurt with calcium supplement, and the tortoises used to eat it!
Intrigued, I later googled around a bit for this topic and found three relevant websites, where the authors recommend offering yogurt to tortoises that have been ill, as a probiotic, to help them build up their gut microbiota:
http://whitney05.hubpages.com/hub/Red-Foot-Tortoises-Health
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=17+1797&aid=942
http://animal.discovery.com/guides/reptiles/turtles/parasites.html
Has anyone ever heard of this or tried it? Has anyone ever offered yogurt to a healthy tortoise? If so, was it well-received, or was any benefit outweighed by lactose intolerance? I am not planning on doing this myself, since turtles don't eat yogurt in the wild (obviously). However, I am just curious now, since this vet-tech recommended the practice to me today.
However, today we had a veterinarian and vet tech come and make a house call to give our cat a checkup. Their practice deals with cats and dogs, not reptiles, but when they saw my Russian tortoises, they chatted with my wife and me about them for a while. At one point, the vet tech surprised me by saying that, in the past when she had worked with tortoises, she used to feed them yogurt with calcium supplement, and the tortoises used to eat it!
Intrigued, I later googled around a bit for this topic and found three relevant websites, where the authors recommend offering yogurt to tortoises that have been ill, as a probiotic, to help them build up their gut microbiota:
http://whitney05.hubpages.com/hub/Red-Foot-Tortoises-Health
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=17+1797&aid=942
http://animal.discovery.com/guides/reptiles/turtles/parasites.html
Has anyone ever heard of this or tried it? Has anyone ever offered yogurt to a healthy tortoise? If so, was it well-received, or was any benefit outweighed by lactose intolerance? I am not planning on doing this myself, since turtles don't eat yogurt in the wild (obviously). However, I am just curious now, since this vet-tech recommended the practice to me today.
The main bacteria in yogurt are Lactobacillus acidophilus which are lactose digesting bacteria. Though several Lactobacillus species occur in turtles there are better ways to get digesting bacteria into them benibac for example of digesting bacteria that occur in over ripe fruit. There are also bacteria cultures of other digesting bacteria though most of those are primarily saprophytes not symbiotic but some are.
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