I, also love the white leopards. You have some very beautiful tortoises. I, personally, love leprocattas. They are beautiful. I hope you post more pictures of your tortoises in the future. They are beautiful and a great treasure!!!
Baoh said:Colder months:
In terms of feeding, I allow and encourage energy dense foods such as Mazuri. Some animals will take to rabbit or alfalfa pellets. I feed a variety of non-processed foods, too. I feed a lot of string beans when they are cheap. I allow many types of fruit (avocado, papaya, mango, tomato, strawberry, squash, bell pepper, opuntia tuna, banana, and so on), but this is in addition to fibrous vegetable matter and not as a substitute for it. I will feed spring mix to young animals. I feed turnip greens, collard greens, romaine lettuce heads, endive, escarole, and the like. Sometimes cactus pads. I sprinkle Miner-all on the food at least a few times a week for young animals.
I never intentionally restrict food.
Warmer months:
Outside, they eat what grows on the ground or falls upon it. Grass primarily. Some weeds. Some garden plants. Fallen blooms and sweet gum leaves. Feces of all sorts (dogs, rabbits, various tortoise species, birds, and deer). Animals (snakes, birds, worms, slugs, and insects). Animal corpses (birds and squirrels). Eggs that have fallen from nests. Remains that the hawks drop when they pick apart their prey on the posts of my fence. Some leftover food if it falls into what I consider an appropriate category.
The smaller young have a separate outdoor enclosure that has weeds, grasses, lots of chia, lots of turnip greens, and more.
I add minerals, especially dolomite flour, to the ground each year to try and boost calcium levels in the yard graze.
Certain animals are given the rich diet of things like Mazuri and avocado year-'round. These are typically animals with high growth demands (giants) or animals who I am seeing if I can bring to maturity faster since it is a matter of size more than anything. If there was anything other than quality growth resulting, I would reevaluate, but all evidence here points to "just fine".
I produce some animals myself and some I acquire in order to improve my projects. I also acquire some for pets, observational insight, and some simply to grow out to sell to others as future breeders. I will eventually produce some for brumation experiments, but I cannot financially justify that just yet. Some of the animals I acquire come to me with significant pyramiding (like a recent ivory pair). The rich diet does not seem to exacerbate the issue and new growth is typically smooth. My high energy density versus low energy density diet phases are essentially the opposite of nature. I do not think it matters, really. I think much of nature is what the animals may simply endure. A portion of nature is what they may need. I think it is up to each individual keeper to decide what they consider to be reasonable for care and I have seen many different practices produce positive and negative results.
If something works for you, I say use it. If something works for me but something else works for you, I see no reason why you should switch to mine or I should switch to yours. If your animals are doing well, I should be happy for you and that is that as far as I am concerned.
Whoops. Forgot to mention it, but I live in the Midwest and deal with a real winter. This makes things much more complicated for me, but I seem to manage okay. It would be a ton easier for me in terms of feeding and housing if I still lived on one of my FL properties.
Baoh said:I make it a point to use the flour/powder over granules for two reasons. The first is the smaller particle size should get into the ground easier. The second is that, if I cast the granules poorly, I am concerned that a smaller animal could consume a group of them that could bind together in the digestive tract, creating a stone like calcium sand can in some lizards. It is probably not something that has a high chance of occurring, but I avoid it by using the flour.
bigred said:Never heard of Dolomite flour before
emysemys said:Another name for it is lime, but don't use hydrated lime. It should say dolomite lime flour.
Baoh said:I add minerals, especially dolomite flour, to the ground each year to try and boost calcium levels in the yard graze.
Cowboy_Ken said:emysemys said:Another name for it is lime, but don't use hydrated lime. It should say dolomite lime flour.
Limestone flour. (Ground up limestone$
I'm not sure why this is in this thread but let me hazard some thoughts on using limestone flour…first off, let me qualify this by saying, I use it regularly and freely. It's 99.9% pure and organic and really inexpensive.
Agriculturally it is a soil enhancer. It binds with clay soils making them looser and it helps loose soils firm up and hold more water. Another property is that it makes available nitrogen for plant use. Put it in your lawn in the spring and you will be rewarded with a green lawn.
Now I freely broadcast this in my tortoise enclosures early morning when the morning dew makes it stick to the grazing. My concern that maybe more inquisitive members may investigate has to do with the freeing up of nitrogen. I have read somewhere that nitrogen buildup is something we need to concern ourselves with as tortoise caretakers. In that the plants the tortoises are grazing on have access to freer nitrogen that might be a health issue. I have no idea what those problems are or how they would manifest themselves but maybe some one out there could help.
jaizei said:Baoh said:I add minerals, especially dolomite flour, to the ground each year to try and boost calcium levels in the yard graze.
Do you/have you done any type of testing or analysis to see how effective this is? I've made similar efforts, but without any actual data it has always been more of a theoretical, "couldn't hurt" kinda thing.