Spineless cactus

[LAwoman]

I am asking for advise on a cactus I purchased. It was supposed to be the spineless type. It still has many little pickers that will get in my fingers unless I wear gloves. I have been shaving all these spines off before I feed them to my girl “Daisy”. Is it safe for her to eat this without me prepping it for her? She loves it!

 

[Blackdog1714]

If you have a blowtorch or gas cooktop just sear the spines off first before feeding

 

[Maro2Bear]

In a word, yes. I know @Tom and many others will agree, those are pretty spineless, so feed away. There are SOME pads that have pretty nasty large thorns that i don’t personally feed, but pads like the ones you have pictured are great.

Here‘s what mine look today. I just break a pad off & feed some to our Sully. No prep.

 

[Matt Fidelibus]

It's edible as is. Most "Spineless" cacti have a few random spines and almost all of them have glochids, which are very small and fine spines that can be very irritating when they get in your skin. Tortoises don't seem to mind pads with a normal amount of glochids but I would avoid feeding varieties that have massive amounts of glochids (yours doesn't fall into this category). I don't bother removing glochids from pads that look like yours do, but fruits on my cactus have more glochids than the pads do, and more spines to. When I feed those I scrape the glochids and spines off with a knife under running water.

 

[Tom]

I am asking for advise on a cactus I purchased. It was supposed to be the spineless type. It still has many little pickers that will get in my fingers unless I wear gloves. I have been shaving all these spines off before I feed them to my girl “Daisy”. Is it safe for her to eat this without me prepping it for her? She loves it!

Yep. Totally safe. You don't have to do anything to it. Those spines and glochids that drive us crazy do nothing to our tortoises. They are impervious to them. I cut pads into a 5 gallon bucket and dump the bucket onto their hay and feeding trays. No prep of any kind. Done it this way for years with all species and everything from day old hatchings to full size adults.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

Personally, I have seen a lot of spineless cactus....
None of them had no spines. ( glochids)
This monster has been trimmed back over and over and still weighs over one hundred pounds.
It was just one "spineless" pad about 6 years ago.
The plus sides are that one this size produces fruit. And I never run out of cactus....