One of the reasons I chose a redfoot is for the variety of things I can feed my Darwin. I love giving him a wide variety of foods, feeding him the rainbow, and the fresher the better.
A large portion of his diet is made up of various greens, and I've been working on expanding the variety of greens I can grow for him, to provide him with healthy foods he'll enjoy.
One of the mainstays of his homegrown greenery is pothos ... it's easy to grow and he loves it!
I have hanging baskets of it all over the house, but don't feed him the stuff from Home Depot until I've repotted it in better soil, and generally only new growth (to avoid their fertilizers and pesticides).
From those baskets I take cuttings from the new growth and put them in water to root ... once they have been in water for a few months, I trim off some leaves for immediate feeding and plant the rooted stems to make directly edible plants (either for his enclosure, or for meal supplementation).
I ordered some opuntia from eBay and Amazon, fed Darwin some, and planted some ... all of them have shown some growth and it's just about warm enough for them to move outside for the summer.
I've been sprouting wheat seeds and planting the mason jars in Darwin's enclosure for him to snack on the young shoots.
I just set up this raised bed yesterday with a bunch of tortoise foodstuff seeds and mixes ... my hope is that it will start producing snacks for Darwin in a few weeks, then overproduce throughout the summer and into the fall so that I can dry/preserve/freeze the extra for the long NH winter.
I'd love your thoughts and ideas for other ways to grow more of Darwin's food based on your experience farming for your torts.
Thanks,
Jamie
A large portion of his diet is made up of various greens, and I've been working on expanding the variety of greens I can grow for him, to provide him with healthy foods he'll enjoy.
One of the mainstays of his homegrown greenery is pothos ... it's easy to grow and he loves it!
I have hanging baskets of it all over the house, but don't feed him the stuff from Home Depot until I've repotted it in better soil, and generally only new growth (to avoid their fertilizers and pesticides).
From those baskets I take cuttings from the new growth and put them in water to root ... once they have been in water for a few months, I trim off some leaves for immediate feeding and plant the rooted stems to make directly edible plants (either for his enclosure, or for meal supplementation).
I ordered some opuntia from eBay and Amazon, fed Darwin some, and planted some ... all of them have shown some growth and it's just about warm enough for them to move outside for the summer.
I've been sprouting wheat seeds and planting the mason jars in Darwin's enclosure for him to snack on the young shoots.
I just set up this raised bed yesterday with a bunch of tortoise foodstuff seeds and mixes ... my hope is that it will start producing snacks for Darwin in a few weeks, then overproduce throughout the summer and into the fall so that I can dry/preserve/freeze the extra for the long NH winter.
I'd love your thoughts and ideas for other ways to grow more of Darwin's food based on your experience farming for your torts.
Thanks,
Jamie