Greens Vs Grass

[CourtneyG]

So I went to a symposium last month and one of the talks that I went to was called "Failing the Gallapogos Tortoises" that had me very curiouse so I went to it.
The talk was about how we are failing them in captivity with their diet and housing.
The housing was about not having enough things for them to climb over and strengthen their legs and as adults they only walk on part of their feet and not the whole foot. But this post is about diet so maybe enclosure types can be another discussion

The main talk was on diet and how it was a huge issues for them. The lady was a zoo manager and she said that she started seeing over the decades how the tortoises in her zoo, other zoos, and people's personal pets, started to look puffy and swollen around their legs and throat and many of them did not live long lives that they should have. Necropsy reveled they had damage to their heart, kidneys, and liver. After years of trying to figure out what was wrong she finally discovered it was their diet and how if not correct at a very young age the damage is permanant, if they get a "goiter like growth on their neck the damage is done and cannot be reversed" but not all is lost if the correct diet is given

She saw that the defult diet people feed their gallaps was greens and vegetables and fruit. She saw how that is very wrong and bad for their health, even fruit was not good at all. She said that 95% of the diet should be hay, because even grass only can be an issue, 5% should be greens and the other 5% should be treats like cactus since fruit, like bananas is not good at all.

She said as convenient as greens are, they are not good for them at all.

After listening to her talk I thought about my own pancakes and how their diet is mostly greens, when I got home I looked at my torts and noticed that my male pancake who I have had for the longest had very similar puffyness around his back legs, and am now slowly trying to convert him and my other cakes to mainly a grass diet.

I think her talk was very good to hear since how we take care of our tortoises is alwayse changing with new discovers being made on what is good and bad for them is being found all the time.

I am bit curiouse to know what you guys as keepers of only herbivores eating tortoises think on her points and if you saw health changes from greens to mainly grass diet or just greens only with a little grass in the diet?

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

We have to study each species closely in it's natural environment and then replicate as closely as possible that diet in our artificial environments, the same as we should try to mimic the temperatures, humidity and substrate.
When something cannot be found in our area, we surely should try to find the closest possible alternative.
Feeding an animal objects that are far removed from the diet it has evolved to digest is almost certainly going to result in problems.

 

[Levi the Leopard]

I've always limited greens in the diet. Grazing on grass and naturally growing weeds and plants has always been my primary way of feeding. Whether or not this applies to leopard tortoises, I'm glad I've done this.

 

[spud's_mum]

Hermanns eat broad leaf plants and weeds.
They find it hard to digest grass.
That's what I read anyway but with most Mediterranean torts, they need mostly weeds and broadleaf plants.

 

[CourtneyG]

I suspected it would be different for each herbivorous tortoises, but the ones she was looking at are grass grazers in the wild normally. I suspect it does apply to leos since their main diet in the wild is grass.

 

[Tom]

I suspect it does apply to leos since their main diet in the wild is grass.

Not so, according to the one study I've seen. Grasses do make up some percentage of the diet for some leopards, but its not the "main" diet in many parts of the range. South African varieties tend to eat more grass in the wild than their more Northern brethren.

About the Galapagos, there is an ongoing major study on this phenomenon. These swellings are not goiters. Diet, humidity, temperatures, and iodine deficiency have all been eliminated as causes. Many Galops are kept in groups. One or two will get these swellings, but the rest don't, even though they are housed and fed identically. Since this is an island species, iodine deficiency was once suspected. But coastal housed specimens still sometimes get these swellings and iodine supplementation did not correct the problem. Iodine levels in enclosure mates were not deficient either, one with a swelling and one or more without. One person made the swellings completely go away with the addition of dried sea weed to the diet. Sadly, the swelling returned a few months later and no amount of seaweed would make them go away this time.

This thing with the Galapagos remains a mystery. We can't figure out what causes it, so we can't figure out how to prevent it.

I am all for feeding better diets and have long advocated against grocery store greens and fruit, but diet is not the cause of these swellings in Galops.

Also, as Spud pointed out, this varies species by species. I've fed grass to russians and they seem unable to digest it. It comes out the other end still green and intact. I've not seen any studies done on wild pancake tortoise diets, but I bet its similar to the leopards that occur in those areas. Lots of succulents and broadleaf weeds. Just a guess.

I don't have any first hand experience with captive giants, but I have also long suspected that small, flat plain enclosures are not ideal. I hope to explore these theories on my own in the coming years. When I do finally get baby Galops they will eat a high percentage of grass and have large enclosures and lots of elevation changes and hills in their enclosures.

 

[CourtneyG]

She described them as goiter like swellings but made sure they were not goiters to us listeners being caused by iodine issues, just that they were found on the neck and full of fluid.

I agree it does vary with regions, for the gallaps she was looking at their native environments and what they eat there in the wild, for other torts it does vary. Pancakes do come from a grassland area so grasses and hays should be more their diet than greens.

I am sure the swellings with Gallaps might have other causes, but for her she found it to be diet. This was something she has been experimenting with now for over 2 decades, she looked at hatchlings being fed her diet restrictions compared to hatchling being fed other varying diets and how it affected them differently. She also looked at therapies for those who have been affected already, like draining the swellings and swimming therapy(that really helped a lot). She also found calcium issues and kidney damage too in one's being fed these greens that have oxalates in them and how over time they cause damage, she said to feed greens low in them sparingly and avoid high oxalate greens at all cost.

Another reason why she does not like bananas and other sweet things is because torts like sweet things more than plain things and might not want to eat their hay and only want their bananas and cactus pads, and owners like to spoil their torts and feed them what they like despite not being the best and trying to get them to eat right can be hard.

 

[JoesMum]

If a tort grazes on weeds in the wild, clover for example, that tend to grow among grass and the tort will ingest some. Judging by Joe's poop he, like quite lot of animals, finds the grass hard to digest and it passes through him. Joe spends alot of time grazing the mixture of weeds in our lawn.

Ruminants, like cows and sheep, chew cud to help them digest grass. Rabbits eat their poop to digest the grass. Some torts eat their poop, so maybe this is part of the reason? It allows them to digest the harder to digest plant material (OK there's no explanation for a sullie's love of cat poop, but hey!)

Torts kept indoors, and in some outdoor enclosures, don't get that opportunity to graze and maybe they are missing something from their diet. Maybe there's a case for putting some turf (grass sod) in outdoor enclosures and putting the food on that. Joe's beak has never needed trimming, so I guess grazing as he does helps to keep the beak in trim too.

 

[ladyengineer]

(OK there's no explanation for a sullie's love of cat poop, but hey!)

There's a cat in my neighbourhood that poops on my lawn. I pick it all up whenever I can but Pegasus has this insane ability to find the TINY pieces that I miss and attempt to eat it! (I wrestle them away from him when I find him doing this, and he always looks super annoyed with me!) What is it with tortoises and cat poop??

 

[CourtneyG]

Torts are hind gut ruminants and perform coprophagia, to eat ones poop, to help digest fibers that were broken down by the bacteria in the colon area.

 

[JoesMum]

Torts are hind gut ruminants and perform coprophagia, to eat ones poop, to help digest fibers that were broken down by the bacteria in the colon area.

Is there extra fiber in cat poop?

 

[Tom]

She described them as goiter like swellings but made sure they were not goiters to us listeners being caused by iodine issues, just that they were found on the neck and full of fluid.

I agree it does vary with regions, for the gallaps she was looking at their native environments and what they eat there in the wild, for other torts it does vary. Pancakes do come from a grassland area so grasses and hays should be more their diet than greens.

I am sure the swellings with Gallaps might have other causes, but for her she found it to be diet. This was something she has been experimenting with now for over 2 decades, she looked at hatchlings being fed her diet restrictions compared to hatchling being fed other varying diets and how it affected them differently. She also looked at therapies for those who have been affected already, like draining the swellings and swimming therapy(that really helped a lot). She also found calcium issues and kidney damage too in one's being fed these greens that have oxalates in them and how over time they cause damage, she said to feed greens low in them sparingly and avoid high oxalate greens at all cost.

Another reason why she does not like bananas and other sweet things is because torts like sweet things more than plain things and might not want to eat their hay and only want their bananas and cactus pads, and owners like to spoil their torts and feed them what they like despite not being the best and trying to get them to eat right can be hard.

This is a good discussion. I would love to get this woman in contact with the woman who comes to the TTPG and is doing the blood work and investigation on this issue for the Galops. Can you find her name and contact info? I will look for the name of the TTPG lady too. Her work and study contradict some of what your lady is saying, but these two ladies should definitely talk, if they haven't already.

There was a presentation given at TTPG on the Flora of SA this last year. There presenter laid out some pretty interesting statistics. There are around 3000 endemic plant species in the large area where the CA DT is found here in SoCal. There are more than 22,000 in South Africa where several tortoise species are found. Many of them succulents. It may be that pancakes are adapted to a high grass diet. It may also be the case that they eat other things and not the grasses as much as many leopards in that area do. I have not seen data or studies to suggest either possibility. I'm saying it may be a mistake to make such an assumption.

Using sulcatas as an example, I have seen them raised on all sorts of diet regimes and they seem to do just fine. It could be that they are more adaptable than some other species.

I don't think the high grass content diet will apply to any of the Testudo family.

I leave you with a final tid bit from the Galapagos islands. On one of the islands, rats have prevented any hatchlings from surviving for decades. For more than 20 years, they have been collecting eggs, incubating them at the Charles Darwin station, head starting them for 5 years or so and releasing them back onto the island from which they came. This island had sparse vegetation and very slim-pickin's for the tortoises. Adults on this island only reach the 60-80 pound range even when they are many decades old. Here is the issue: The head started babies that were released long ago are over 150 pounds... There is growing concern that the island will not be able to support them. On a brighter note, the rats have been completely exterminated on this island and for the first time in 70 this particular variety of Galapagos tortoise on this particular island is reproducing on its own without human help or interference.

Thank you for the discussion and for posting what you learned on this topic.

 

[Tom]

There's a cat in my neighbourhood that poops on my lawn. I pick it all up whenever I can but Pegasus has this insane ability to find the TINY pieces that I miss and attempt to eat it! (I wrestle them away from him when I find him doing this, and he always looks super annoyed with me!) What is it with tortoises and cat poop??

Protein. Many of our captive tortoises are lacking in protein in their diet. Mammal feces makes up a significant portion of the diet of some wild species. I am told this is the case with leopard tortoises, but have seen no studies to verify this or verify it with any other species either. Just throwing that out there for the sake of discussion.

 

[CourtneyG]

If I can get her info I will send it your way.