My two young torts are baffled by their cuttle bones - not quite sure what to do with them. Do you think that means they're not needing any supplementation at the moment? I have the cuttle bones located by their food dishes. Anyone else have this happen?
pass the cuttle bone
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Maggie Cummings
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just leave it, they'll munch on it when they want to. Sometimes it takes weeks for them to eat it...
Mine mostly ignore them too. BUT, every once in a while one will surprise me and go over and start munching away. I usually break them in half and just leave them lying around in there.
This is my experience too.Tom said:
Sometime I will crumble some up and offer it to the little guys that way too. Nice that cuttlebones cost so little, that we can afford to just leave them sit around and not really be bothered if they never seem to gnaw on them, before we humans think they are dirty and need replacing. 
My Mortimer, a Sulcata, would love to eat his cuttle bone---especially when it landed in the water dish and got a little "gooey". I would always have two in his enclosure and he got to pick hard or soft because of the water. It wasn't an everyday thing --- sometimes not for a couple of days and then nonstop 'til it was down to a nub.
wow, ok, good to know. Thought maybe I was missing a key element in cuttle bone presentation
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I not only have small pieces of cuttlebone available to all my young tortoises but also have powdered calcium carbonate available to them at all times in a small, container lid. I find that the smallest tortoises will consume the powdered calcium much more often than cuttlebone. Once I see that they have been taking bites of the cuttlebone, usually within a few years, I remove the powdered calcium carbonate and only make the cuttlebone available to them.
My tort has never been interested in his. I think it is important to give torts calcium. I sprinkle pure calcium over my yearling's food daily. Once he gets older I will cut back a bit, but because calcium is water soluble you really can't overdo it too easily.
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