Little Rocks in Outdoor Enclosure

[T Smart]

Just spent way to long cleaning every inch of my outdoor enclosure looking for small rocks / items that could be ingested. Now I have no problem doing this, and I know this is a necessary part of maintaining an outdoor enclosure, but man does it take forever. These rocks just magically appear. Anyways.... Has anyone over the years found fast or easy ways to do this? Or does anyone know a top layer of substrate, larger rocks, soil, etc ... that isn't too expensive, which could cover this rocky soil?

 

[Yvonne G]

Plant a quick growing ground cover.

I took a YF tortoise to the vet several years ago because she was prolapsed. Come to find out she was trying to push out eggs that were to big for her. But in the process of diagnosing, an X-ray was taken. Her digestive tract was FULL of tiny pebbles. How can this be? There are no rocks in their yard! So I got down on my hands and knees and gave the dirt a close inspection, and lo and behold! Yes, it was absolutely covered in very tiny pebbles. I now have dichondra, violets and mint. There are still patches where the tortoises can find dirt, but I've since learned that the RF and YF tortoises do eat small pebbles to aid in digestion. In the wild, they eat fruit with seeds to serve this function.

So rake it up as best you can, then plant a ground cover that will hide all those tiny rocks you've missed.

 

[T Smart]

Plant a quick growing ground cover.

I took a YF tortoise to the vet several years ago because she was prolapsed. Come to find out she was trying to push out eggs that were to big for her. But in the process of diagnosing, an X-ray was taken. Her digestive tract was FULL of tiny pebbles. How can this be? There are no rocks in their yard! So I got down on my hands and knees and gave the dirt a close inspection, and lo and behold! Yes, it was absolutely covered in very tiny pebbles. I now have dichondra, violets and mint. There are still patches where the tortoises can find dirt, but I've since learned that the RF and YF tortoises do eat small pebbles to aid in digestion. In the wild, they eat fruit with seeds to serve this function.

So rake it up as best you can, then plant a ground cover that will hide all those tiny rocks you've missed.

Assuming these all are safe for Russians, and quick growing? Any other ground cover suggestions?

 

[ZEROPILOT]

South Florida....At least this part of it....Is re claimed swamp and made of Coral rock with some sand and soil on top. Removing all rocks is an impossible task.
My Redfoot will eat rocks. But always having cuttlebone around stops this from happening for the most part.
In my opinion, they eat rocks because of mineral deficiency and not because they just like to eat rocks.
But then again there isn't much that a Redfoot wont eat!
Seriously. I keep it available and change it out every few weeks. Eaten or not.

 

[Carol S]

I feed my tortoises Miner-All. My Desert Tortoises were eating dirt and I started giving them Miner-All instead of plain calcium and they stopped eating dirt. They make one for outdoor tortoises and one for indoor tortoises (the indoor one has D3 in it). I buy mine from LLLreptile.com.