Yup.
kevantheman35 said:so if you feed them mazuri, your saying you dont need a uvb light?
kevantheman35 said:so if you feed them mazuri, your saying you dont need a uvb light?
-EJ said:Yup.
kevantheman35 said:so if you feed them mazuri, your saying you dont need a uvb light?
JustAnja said:Robin can I ask ,your torts .are awesome the 2 large one I know the one on the right is a sulcata,but not sure about the big guy .and did you same he's only 8 years old.great job you've done with them they are beauthful
Those are actually pics of some of -EJ's tortoises, the large one is an Aldabra.
Madkins007 said:I am not going to argue against EJ, just as I would not argue against TurtleTary/TurtleNERD- those that do things that work have the high ground in this discussion!
Diets drive everyone crazy- long-term keepers find something that works and go with it. Zoos argue and play games with it all the time. Pet food is a multi-billion dollar industry. Heck, we cannot even agree on the right diet for pet dogs, for crying out loud!
You can find articles all over for tortoise diets, and for every article there is someone yelling about how bad it is, even with documented evidence that the animals are healthy and doing well.
The National Zoo raises their Red-foots on: "...chopped oranges, bananas, apples, sweet potatoes, carrots, hard-boiled eggs, lettuce, kale and parsley in amounts that can be eaten by the six animals in 20 minutes. They are led every Monday and Thursday. The ‘salad’ is supplemented with powdered Pervinal and bone meal, and on Thursday feline diet is added. " (Sam Davis, “Husbandry and breeding of the Red-footed tortoise, Geochelone carbonaria, at the National Zoological Park, Washington.†International Zoo Yearbook, 19: 50-53. 1979) Of the 12 diet items mentioned, nine are listed in many articles as not good for Red-foots- yet the zoo goes on to hatch out babies at an impressive rate.
All this said- I don't plan on doing Mazuri anytime real soon. I am just not a fan of fake foods, for torts or humans. I know that a lot of reseach says 'nutrients are nutrients' whether natural or chemical, but the more I study diabetes, the Paleo-diet, etc., the less I am sure of this.
Madkins007 said:Dang. I thought I was making a point. Let me try again.
There is no such thing as 'the perfect tortoise diet'. Heck, there is no such thing as 'the perfect human diet' or 'pet dog diet'- and we have spent more time and money trying to find those.
Ed has success with Mazuri. TurtleNERD has success with his specific diet plan for Red-foots. The Washington Zoo has a plan, Richard Cary Paull has a plan, everyone who has ever published a site or book has a plan...
...And most of these plans work! It is often easy to find BIG problems with many of the plans- too much sugar, too much grain, too costly, too time consuming, etc. But the plans work anyway- the animals are growing and reproducing- the standards of the success of any feeding and husbandry plan.
I think we forget a couple of key points in this discussion...
1. Tortoises only need a few calories a day. (The formula, if you are interested, is 'body weight in kilos to the 0.75th power, times 32, equals daily caloric need.) Most of our diets offer more than they need. (ref: Dr. Douglas Mader, Reptile Medicine and Surgery)
2. Wild tortoises take in a lot of bulk and fairly low amounts of most nutrients in a day, and make up for it by digesting them slowly- about 20 times slower than a mammal would! Red-foots take about 3 days to digest fruit and 9 to digest vegetation. (Ref: "Flexibility of digestive responses in two generalist herbivores, the tortoises Geochelone carbonaria and Geochelone denticulate", Bjorndahl, and his section in the book "Gastrointestinal Ecosystems and Fermentations")
So- if you take a slow-digesting animal that usually eats fairly low nutrient foods and offer it a diet that follows a few basic guidelines (not too much sugar or fat, good calcium/phosphorus ratio, right roughage for the species, etc.), you should be OK. In a week's passage time, it should be able to suck nutrients out of almost anything!
Madkins007 said:1. Tortoises only need a few calories a day (ref: Dr. Douglas Mader, Reptile Medicine and Surgery)
2. Wild tortoises take in a lot of bulk and fairly low amounts of most nutrients in a day, (Ref: "Flexibility of digestive responses in two generalist herbivores, the tortoises Geochelone carbonaria and Geochelone denticulate", Bjorndahl, and his section in the book "Gastrointestinal Ecosystems and Fermentations")
emysemys said:Crazy1 said:. My Pomeranian, he has found he LOVES it. He thinks it is the best thing he has ever tired and when I take it outside to feed to the DT he will dance all over the yard trying to get me to give him some.
LOL!! Yesterday I brought home a 50lb bag of Trout Chow (Aqua Max) and I sat in my recliner chair with the bag on one side and some plastic sandwich bags on the other. I bagged it up into the smaller bags while I watched TV, then put it into the freezer. Trouble was, my finicky cat, who only licks the juice off the canned cat food and will only eat a certain brand of dry cat food, wouldn't leave me alone! She LOVES that stuff!! (As an aside to this story: You just can't wash that fishy smell off of you! It must grab onto the nose hairs and stick there. I'm still smelling it this a.m.! I tried to have an ice cream snack last night, and the fishy smell just turned my stomach...couldn't eat the ice cream! H-m-m-m- m! A new diet plan??????)
Yvonne
JourneyTort said:Hey Siwash you could probably get Rens Pet Food in Oakville to order it for you if they don't stock it. They are pretty reasonable.
JourneyTort
Lil said:How do you get your torts to eat Mazuri food? My torts avoid pellets and only eat veggies.