1 year Leopard eating SO MUCH!

[jwking]

Hello everyone,

I have a one year leopard tortoise who has a VERY good appetite. I generally feed her 2 piles the size of her shell of leafy greens/grass/weeds a day but she always eats ALL of it and when I offer her a 3rd pile she will eat all of that as well. I have a few questions:

I'm wondering how much is too much food?
If she is hungry for 3 piles, do I feed her the 3 piles or keep it to 2?
I don't ever feed her fruits and vegetables because she seems super happy with what I'm currently offering her. Is this okay?

I make sure she gets a ton of variety in the piles (dandelion greens, timothy hay, grass, rose leaves and petals, clover, grape leaves, romaine, kale, mazuri pellets).

Thanks!

 

[haydog_99]

Wow, lot different than my yearling, how big is she?

 

[Maro2Bear]

Id say, they are grazers so provide as much variety and volume. Definitely feed as much as they will eat, provided it has a nice large enclosure to walk about.

Hope you have checked out Tom’s Care Sheet..

The Best Way To Raise A Sulcata, Leopard, Or Star Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. Babies hatch during the...

www.tortoiseforum.org

 

[jwking]

Wow, lot different than my yearling, how big is she?

She is 590 grams and growing so fast! How big is yours?

 

[jwking]

Id say, they are grazers so provide as much variety and volume. Definitely feed as much as they will eat, provided it has a nice large enclosure to walk about.

Hope you have checked out Tom’s Care Sheet..

The Best Way To Raise A Sulcata, Leopard, Or Star Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. Babies hatch during the...

www.tortoiseforum.org

Yes! Thanks, Tom's sheets are super helpful but don't say if you can overfeed which is what I was worried about.

 

[haydog_99]

She is 590 grams and growing so fast! How big is yours?

150 grams is your a PB or a PP

 

[jwking]

150 grams is your a PB or a PP

PB

 

[RosemaryDW]

So long as they have a big enough enclosure to walk it off, you can’t overfeed. Let ‘em at it!

 

[haydog_99]

PB

That’s a big one, mine is a midget.

 

[Tom]

Hello everyone,

I have a one year leopard tortoise who has a VERY good appetite. I generally feed her 2 piles the size of her shell of leafy greens/grass/weeds a day but she always eats ALL of it and when I offer her a 3rd pile she will eat all of that as well. I have a few questions:

I'm wondering how much is too much food?
If she is hungry for 3 piles, do I feed her the 3 piles or keep it to 2?
I don't ever feed her fruits and vegetables because she seems super happy with what I'm currently offering her. Is this okay?

I make sure she gets a ton of variety in the piles (dandelion greens, timothy hay, grass, rose leaves and petals, clover, grape leaves, romaine, kale, mazuri pellets).

Thanks!

Tortoises are grazers. Let your tortoise eat as much of the right food as it wants. Weeds, grasses, opuntia pads, flowers, etc... Occasional soaked Mazuri or ZooMed pellets.

No fruit, minimal veggies.

 

[jwking]

Tortoises are grazers. Let your tortoise eat as much of the right food as it wants. Weeds, grasses, opuntia pads, flowers, etc... Occasional soaked Mazuri or ZooMed pellets.

No fruit, minimal veggies.

thanks Tom!

 

[jwking]

That’s a big one, mine is a midget.

so cute! Here is my hungry giant.

 

[jwking]

Tortoises are grazers. Let your tortoise eat as much of the right food as it wants. Weeds, grasses, opuntia pads, flowers, etc... Occasional soaked Mazuri or ZooMed pellets.

No fruit, minimal veggies.

Tom I had a question on the feeding. I’ve read a few places that it’s good for the tortoise to have a day or 2 a week with no food... but this seems cruel because of how much my little leopard loves to eat (I’m feeding her twice a day, a pile a little smaller than her shell each time with a big variety of her natural foods)? What do you think? She is a year and a half.

 

[Tom]

What do you think?

Here is what I think:
Tortoises are grazers. Let your tortoise eat as much of the right food as it wants. Weeds, grasses, opuntia pads, flowers, etc... Occasional soaked Mazuri or ZooMed pellets.

No fruit, minimal veggies.

Those sources are quoting old, wrong, misguided info. It was once erroneously believed that pyramiding was caused by too much food/too much protein/too much nutrition/too much of the wrong foods. This is and was wrong. Food has nothing to do with it unless you want to get technical and say that food causes growth, so food is responsible in a round about way for growth happening in conditions that are too dry. Anything else those sources have to say should also be suspect. Most of the world still has the wrong idea and the wrong info about tortoise keeping.

You should feed your leopard as much as it wants. Not two piles smaller than her. Feed her two piles bigger than her. She should have food available for grazing all day every day and be housed in the correct conditions. One can make a case that its okay, possibly beneficial, for some large carnivores to skip a day of feeding now and then. Not the same thing for a herbivore. They don't work like that. A tortoise can certainly survive a fasting day, but I fail to see how that would be beneficial to it in any way.

 

[jwking]

Here is what I think:
Tortoises are grazers. Let your tortoise eat as much of the right food as it wants. Weeds, grasses, opuntia pads, flowers, etc... Occasional soaked Mazuri or ZooMed pellets.

No fruit, minimal veggies.

Those sources are quoting old, wrong, misguided info. It was once erroneously believed that pyramiding was caused by too much food/too much protein/too much nutrition/too much of the wrong foods. This is and was wrong. Food has nothing to do with it unless you want to get technical and say that food causes growth, so food is responsible in a round about way for growth happening in conditions that are too dry. Anything else those sources have to say should also be suspect. Most of the world still has the wrong idea and the wrong info about tortoise keeping.

You should feed your leopard as much as it wants. Not two piles smaller than her. Feed her two piles bigger than her. She should have food available for grazing all day every day and be housed in the correct conditions. One can make a case that its okay, possibly beneficial, for some large carnivores to skip a day of feeding now and then. Not the same thing for a herbivore. They don't work like that. A tortoise can certainly survive a fasting day, but I fail to see how that would be beneficial to it in any way.

Super helpful. Thank you!!!

 

[jwking]

Here is what I think:
Tortoises are grazers. Let your tortoise eat as much of the right food as it wants. Weeds, grasses, opuntia pads, flowers, etc... Occasional soaked Mazuri or ZooMed pellets.

No fruit, minimal veggies.

Those sources are quoting old, wrong, misguided info. It was once erroneously believed that pyramiding was caused by too much food/too much protein/too much nutrition/too much of the wrong foods. This is and was wrong. Food has nothing to do with it unless you want to get technical and say that food causes growth, so food is responsible in a round about way for growth happening in conditions that are too dry. Anything else those sources have to say should also be suspect. Most of the world still has the wrong idea and the wrong info about tortoise keeping.

You should feed your leopard as much as it wants. Not two piles smaller than her. Feed her two piles bigger than her. She should have food available for grazing all day every day and be housed in the correct conditions. One can make a case that its okay, possibly beneficial, for some large carnivores to skip a day of feeding now and then. Not the same thing for a herbivore. They don't work like that. A tortoise can certainly survive a fasting day, but I fail to see how that would be beneficial to it in any way.

Tom, I wanted to get your advice on this... photo is attached. My 1.5 year old leopard had her daily bath today and in her poo were 19 pebbles!! 19!!! I googled to see what people say about tortoises eating rocks and the reasons I found were they need calcium or other minerals (she gets calcium and a multi vitamin sprinkled into her food 2-3x a week), they're bored (she gets a fantastic outdoor enclosure when it's warm and a huge room to roam around in with plants and places to hide). From your experience, are there other reasons they like to eat rocks? She LOVES to eat, as I've detailed before, could it just be she thinks they're food and tries to eat them?? She's also the roof climber.... the one who climbed to the top of my ROOF a few months back and I posted about it... is she just adventurous?? Any advice is always welcome. Thanks!

 

[Tom]

Tom, I wanted to get your advice on this... photo is attached. My 1.5 year old leopard had her daily bath today and in her poo were 19 pebbles!! 19!!! I googled to see what people say about tortoises eating rocks and the reasons I found were they need calcium or other minerals (she gets calcium and a multi vitamin sprinkled into her food 2-3x a week), they're bored (she gets a fantastic outdoor enclosure when it's warm and a huge room to roam around in with plants and places to hide). From your experience, are there other reasons they like to eat rocks? She LOVES to eat, as I've detailed before, could it just be she thinks they're food and tries to eat them?? She's also the roof climber.... the one who climbed to the top of my ROOF a few months back and I posted about it... is she just adventurous?? Any advice is always welcome. Thanks!

This typically happens when they are fed too much grocery store food, and not enough other good foods. Another contributing factor can be too much calcium supplementation. Calcium interferes with the absorption of other important minerals and trace elements. When you give them too much calcium, it causes a mineral imbalance and they eat rocks to try and correct this imbalance.

The solution is to offer a high fiber "natural" diet. Weeds and leaves are hard to find this time of year, so you'll need to add fiber some other way. Read the diet section here in the care sheet for more info on that: https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/t...leopard-or-star-tortoise.181497/#post-1814413
And this thread has more info with food suggestions. Different species, but similar diet list. Less grass for a leopard, generally speaking, but lots of the other things listed.

For Those Who Have a Young Sulcata...

Over and over I type up and answer diet questions and try to get people feeding the right stuff, but I find that the "norm" is grocery store food. Grocery store food is expensive, a hassle to obtain, and very low on the list of what is best for sulcatas. These tortoises are GRASS eaters. From...

tortoiseforum.org

The other part of the solution is to get some "MinerAll". Its a balanced mineral supplement made by Sticky Tongue Farms. Use it every other day for a couple of weeks and then cut back to two times per week for longer term maintenance. This stuff, along with more fiber in the diet, and a better diet, usually curbs the rock eating behavior.

 

[jwking]

This typically happens when they are fed too much grocery store food, and not enough other good foods. Another contributing factor can be too much calcium supplementation. Calcium interferes with the absorption of other important minerals and trace elements. When you give them too much calcium, it causes a mineral imbalance and they eat rocks to try and correct this imbalance.

The solution is to offer a high fiber "natural" diet. Weeds and leaves are hard to find this time of year, so you'll need to add fiber some other way. Read the diet section here in the care sheet for more info on that: https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/t...leopard-or-star-tortoise.181497/#post-1814413
And this thread has more info with food suggestions. Different species, but similar diet list. Less grass for a leopard, generally speaking, but lots of the other things listed.

For Those Who Have a Young Sulcata...

Over and over I type up and answer diet questions and try to get people feeding the right stuff, but I find that the "norm" is grocery store food. Grocery store food is expensive, a hassle to obtain, and very low on the list of what is best for sulcatas. These tortoises are GRASS eaters. From...

tortoiseforum.org

The other part of the solution is to get some "MinerAll". Its a balanced mineral supplement made by Sticky Tongue Farms. Use it every other day for a couple of weeks and then cut back to two times per week for longer term maintenance. This stuff, along with more fiber in the diet, and a better diet, usually curbs the rock eating behavior.

Hi Tom- so my leopard only gets grocery greens 1x a week. The rest of the time she gets a great variety of greens/flowers from outside. I make a "salad" for her at the beginning of the week and sprinkle a little bit of mineralAll and scrape some cuttlebone onto the salad. I mix it all up and she gets that on a daily basis mixed with some soaked Mazuri 2-3x week. In this instance, do you think I'm giving her too much cuttlebone (calcium)? I'd be surprised because I don't scrape that much into her food but I doubt it's the lack of greens because she's getting such a good wild mix of things?