Golden Hatchling Diet. Sweet Potato and Squash?

AllieKat1997

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Hello! I’m getting my Golden hatchling tomorrow and we picked up a few things for him/her. We went ahead and grabbed a squash because I read that fed a very small amount once a week is good, and also a sweet potato. I’m assuming both of these - the squash and sweet potato - needs peeled? Should the sweet potato be fed once a week as well or less often? I heard both freeze great and I’m so glad for that, haha.
If you have any other food suggustions I’d love them. I have a gigantic list of foods but it’s good to have variety and hear others opinions.
Thanks so much!
 

SweetGreekTorts

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I raise lots of different subspecies of Greek tortoise hatchlings, and I do not feed them any sweet potato or squash.

Their diet is broadleaf greens, weeds, and flowers. I vary their diet with Mazuri, prickly pear cactus, optunia fruit (prickly pear fruit, not the same thing as other fruit), and once a week they get "store bought" greens (escarole, endive, red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce, dandelion greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, and radicchio).
 

AllieKat1997

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Thank you for the reply! That’s why I was wondering what everyone does. Nobody goes it the same! The member said they fed one inch cube of squash once a week. Thank you!
 

Tom

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Great advice from @irishkitty

You can feed a little squash or yam once a week mixed in with other greens. Best to grate it. Fine grate for smaller tortoises and larger grating for bigger tortoises.

Here is a list of other foods to offer too:
Mulberry leaves
Grape vine leaves
Hibiscus leaves
African hibiscus leaves
Blue hibiscus leaves
Rose of Sharon leaves
Rose leaves
Geraniums
Gazanias
Lavatera
Pansies
Petunias
Hostas
Honeysuckle
Cape honeysuckle
Leaves and blooms from any squash plant, like pumpkin, cucumber, summer squash, etc...
Young spineless opuntia cactus pads

Weeds:
There are soooooooo many...
Dandelion
Mallow
Filaree
Smooth Sow thistle
Prickly Sow thistle
Milk thistle
Goat head weed
Cats ear
Nettles
Trefoil
Wild onion
Wild mustard
Wild Garlic
Clovers
Broadleaf plantain
Narrow leaf plantain
Chick weed
Hawksbit
Hensbit
Hawksbeard

Other good stuff:
"Testudo Seed Mix" from http://www.tortoisesupply.com/SeedMixes
Pasture mixes or other seeds from http://www.groworganic.com/seeds.html
Homegrown alfalfa
Mazuri Tortoise Chow
ZooMed Grassland Tortoise Food
 

RosemaryDW

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No one does it quite the same, do they? :)

I feed something “orange” (yam, squash, carrot) to my Russian about once a month, maybe twice. Some people feed it more often. I don’t think of it as a treat; there are some different vitamins and minerals in there than the green foods she mainly gets.

Today she got a tiny bit of pumpkin guts, out of the Halloween pumpkin. :)
 

Kapidolo Farms

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Proportion, proportion, proportion, people - this is what I feed them, and it is often everyone's advice to feed what the person you got the tortoise from feeds, YES?

By nutrient proportion ZooMed Gourmet tortoise food is one of the best of the packaged diets out there. It is the grassland with hibiscus and sweet potato added. A small amount of sweet potato is a great diet addition to ANY herbivore.

I feed a mix, for me the volumes are large.
4 to 6 heads of romaine
4 to 6 heads of escarole
1 or 2 heads of radicchio
1.5 pounds of spring mix (I leave the spinach in)
1 pound of arugula
about a cup each of two kinds of shredded squash
1/2 cup to one cup of shredded sweet potato

Some times, about once a month, I don't use the arugula and spring mix, but chop in Kale (a few different kinds), dandelion greens, collards, or 'red' romaine, butter lettuce, red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce, or something else that is weird relative to "American" palates but found in Asian grocery stores. I will also get Okra when it is not crazy expensive, but that is rarely the case. I also use greens beans, a five pound bag of frozen organic will last several months, I just add a few dozen once in awhile finely chopped so they can't pick it out but get the taste.

I alternate and some times add both chopped/shredded re-hydrated hibiscus blossoms and or cactus - about 1/4 to 1/2 cup per item.
I will re-hydrate to about one cup volume of either/or both Alfalfa pellets and some kind of grass pellets.

One day a week I add no supplement
2-3 times a week I add about 1/4 cup Vionate (has D3)
2-3 times a week I add about 1/2 cup of moistened crumbles (has D3)
1 time a week I add plain calcium carbonate (no D3)
Once a month I will microwave cook two eggs out of the shell, and mince it fine a mix that in.

On no particular schedule I add fresh blossoms of many many kinds of flowers, rose, hibiscus, nasturtium, pansy, dandelions, or cape honeysuckle.

I keep a chart above where I do salad prep to keep me on track. It takes about two hours a day on average to make the salad, then another hour to feed it out and do spot water changes/cleaning/raining.

I set to the side in the enclosure whole small branches of hibiscus, or mulberry when the garden is producing enough, so some everyday, but which enclosure gets it alternates.
 

Kapidolo Farms

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Thank you for the reply! That’s why I was wondering what everyone does. Nobody goes it the same! The member said they fed one inch cube of squash once a week. Thank you!

"about a cup each of two kinds of shredded squash
1/2 cup to one cup of shredded sweet potato"

is what I said (actually wrote). So this too is how care instructions get mingled. @AllieKat1997 how is it going?
 

AllieKat1997

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Thank you! He’s doing really really well. Too young to gender but I’m just calling him a “him” for now, haha.
 

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