Tortoise poop

[speedyTortoise]

Hey guys, lately my tortoises poop has been hard. Like, when I give him a soak his poop is hard and doesn’t dissolve in the water. Before, his poop dissolved in the water. I recently changed his diet to be more healthy, making him eat arugula, lettuce, and less carrots and pepper. Although, this week we ran out of arugula so I only fed him butter lettuce leaves and a little pepper and carrots. Is this type of poop healthy or unhealthy? He is a 10 year old Russian tortoise.

 

[Yossarian]

How hard is hard determines a lot here. To elaborate, their poo should always be wet and softish, but if they have a lot of fibre in their diet it can be a more solid consistency so the speak, I would still describe it as pretty soft though. If your talking about the white stuff, that can sometimes be thick and chalky, if they consume a lot of calcium at once for example, if they get dehydrated they can produce chalky poo as well.

There is nothing wrong with butter lettuce leaves really, they have plenty of moisture, just not much nutrition, if your tort likes them they make a nice treat once in a while as a change from their core diet. In california you should really not have any difficulty sourcing a qood quality diet.

 

[speedyTortoise]

How hard is hard determines a lot here. To elaborate, their poo should always be wet and softish, but if they have a lot of fibre in their diet it can be a more solid consistency so the speak, I would still describe it as pretty soft though. If your talking about the white stuff, that can sometimes be thick and chalky, if they consume a lot of calcium at once for example, if they get dehydrated they can produce chalky poo as well.

There is nothing wrong with butter lettuce leaves really, they have plenty of moisture, just not much nutrition, if your tort likes them they make a nice treat once in a while as a change from their core diet. In california you should really not have any difficulty sourcing a qood quality diet.

Alright, thanks for the help! We actually just moved to North Carolina but I think it will still be pretty easy to give my tort good food.

 

[LoriJammy]

Hey guys, lately my tortoises poop has been hard. Like, when I give him a soak his poop is hard and doesn’t dissolve in the water. Before, his poop dissolved in the water. I recently changed his diet to be more healthy, making him eat arugula, lettuce, and less carrots and pepper. Although, this week we ran out of arugula so I only fed him butter lettuce leaves and a little pepper and carrots. Is this type of poop healthy or unhealthy? He is a 10 year old Russian tortoise.

This is a great link for Russians that you may want to check out. https://www.russiantortoise.net/russiantortoisediet.htm

 

[speedyTortoise]

This is a great link for Russians that you may want to check out. https://www.russiantortoise.net/russiantortoisediet.htm

I read it and it has a lot of interesting content. Thanks!