Manufactured Diet... very long post.

[pawsplus]

OK, found the ingredients of the Mazuri tortoise diet:

Ground soybean hulls, ground corn, ground oats, dehulled soybean meal, wheat middlings, cane molasses, brewers' dried yeast, soybean oil, wheat germ, dehydrated alfalfa meal, dicalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, salt, DL-methionine, choline chioride, menadione dimethylpyrimidinol bisulfite, pyri- doxine hydrochloride, D-alpha tocopheryl acetate, cholecalciferol, biotin, calcium pantothenate, ethoxyquin (a preservative), vitamin A acetate, riboflavin, L-lysine, nicotinicacid, thiamine mononitrate, cyanocobalamin, folic acid, manganous oxide, zinc oxide, ferrous carbonate, copper sulfate, zinc sulfate, calcium iodate, cobalt carbonate, sodium selenite. 30% roughage products ground soybean hulls

I'm sorry but I would never feed ANY of that to a tortoise. They are not meant to eat grains, beans, molasses, etc. Not to mention ethoxyquin! They are foraging animals, period.

Bowing out now b/c I don't want to get into an argument, but I wanted to post this so people would know the ingredients of the diet.

[Pies]

Good point Ed.
When you think about it, most animals will eat their fill; some will even gorge themselves to the point of bursting. A tort can't do this because of the constraint of the shell. So presumably it will stop eating before it feels uncomfortable.
Mine will sometimes eat like it's going out of fashion, then other times, they hardly eat much at all.
Perhaps it's just humans who have this notion that you should always leave the table feeling as if you could eat a little more, or counting calories.

Must admit, I DON'T, well Mrs Pies is a size 6 (lives on rabbit food), so someone has to eat all the food!!!

[EJ]

For those of you who have Stars... many people call them pretty rocks... myself included... in the past.

These thing are little maniacs now. While I do feed them ad lib I only give them one bowl a day as you see with the baby leopards. With the larger tortoises they get fed one bowl about every 4 or 5 days. The guys in the yard do get to forage. When I clip the grass/lawn the tortoises indoors get that on occasion. Also in the spring and summer when I have time they do get weeds also.

To answer your question... they go about their regular routine even when fed this stuff.

Ed

Originally Posted by terrypin

thanks for the post on mazuri Ed it certainly seems a usefull suppliment although i try to survive on mostly forage when i can i must confess something like this would be ideal if really did work .do you find your torts as active when they are bowl fed and do they spend a lot of time foraging even though they are full u.

terry

[Pussygalore]

I to can see the use of pellets for a short while in sick animals as they obviously have something in them that they like, but thats the worrying part when fed more permanetly we all know how certain foods are addictive and the reaction colourants etc have on children also a diet of what we liked would kill us pretty quickly, for the sake of seeing what happened I have tried my hermans on the T Rex I didn't buy it but was given a sample and mine went mad for it but it was this reaction that made me not want to use them it didn't seem normal and if they drink more water doesn't that suggest high salt levels or other additives that have the same effect or that they swell up in the stomach and the water is need to make them pass through the system,

[Pies]

Originally Posted by pawsplus

OK, found the ingredients of the Mazuri tortoise diet:

Ground soybean hulls, ground corn, ground oats, dehulled soybean meal, wheat middlings, cane molasses, brewers' dried yeast, soybean oil, wheat germ, dehydrated alfalfa meal, dicalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, salt, DL-methionine, choline chioride, menadione dimethylpyrimidinol bisulfite, pyri- doxine hydrochloride, D-alpha tocopheryl acetate, cholecalciferol, biotin, calcium pantothenate, ethoxyquin (a preservative), vitamin A acetate, riboflavin, L-lysine, nicotinicacid, thiamine mononitrate, cyanocobalamin, folic acid, manganous oxide, zinc oxide, ferrous carbonate, copper sulfate, zinc sulfate, calcium iodate, cobalt carbonate, sodium selenite. 30% roughage products ground soybean hulls

I'm sorry but I would never feed ANY of that to a tortoise. They are not meant to eat grains, beans, molasses, etc. Not to mention ethoxyquin! They are foraging animals, period.

Bowing out now b/c I don't want to get into an argument, but I wanted to post this so people would know the ingredients of the diet.

STONE THE CROWS!!!

That does not sound good.

[helen1]

I am not defending dried food or decrying it...each to their own...I have 6 children who all eat differing diets (1 veggie' 1 fast food freak etc etc) ...they make their own choices...

However I wonder how much of that list of contents of the Mazuri diet is also present in their natural and captive diets...but in different ways..I get my vitamin C from innumerable oranges..hubby gets his from a tablet? So although the "names" are not familiar maybe the nutritional content in someways is?

Could be wrong.

[EJ]

A little note here...

If I miss feeding the Redfoots one week they will gorge the next week when I do feed. They will eat so much that they litterally puke... I'm talking spew. I can't imagine how the do this but the first time it happened it totally freaked me out. Now, if I miss a feeding I meter the next feeding so they can't do this. I've never seen this with any other tortoise. It is interesting.

Originally Posted by Pies

Good point Ed.
When you think about it, most animals will eat their fill; some will even gorge themselves to the point of bursting. A tort can't do this because of the constraint of the shell. So presumably it will stop eating before it feels uncomfortable.
Mine will sometimes eat like it's going out of fashion, then other times, they hardly eat much at all.
Perhaps it's just humans who have this notion that you should always leave the table feeling as if you could eat a little more, or counting calories.

Must admit, I DON'T, well Mrs Pies is a size 6 (lives on rabbit food), so someone has to eat all the food!!!

[helen1]

Hmm...I have a golden greek who nibbles.............and often eats bu..er all. However she has favourite foods ie snapdragon flowers and leaves off strawberry plants...she got to both of these on seperate occassions this year...and was sick......a lot...

[EJ]

The salt and molassas was brought up in the past.

I was talking about this one day while preparing the groups meal and my daughter suggested that I just taste it and see how much salt and whatnot there is... so I did. It was quite bland. Kinda like cardboard. Keep in mind the majority is fiber.

The T-rex diet is another one that is very well researched. I personally don't like the coloration either but that is what gets some animals to take it and I don't think it does any harm. Like I said, I know it is well researched.

Originally Posted by Pussygalore

I to can see the use of pellets for a short while in sick animals as they obviously have something in them that they like, but thats the worrying part when fed more permanetly we all know how certain foods are addictive and the reaction colourants etc have on children also a diet of what we liked would kill us pretty quickly, for the sake of seeing what happened I have tried my hermans on the T Rex I didn't buy it but was given a sample and mine went mad for it but it was this reaction that made me not want to use them it didn't seem normal and if they drink more water doesn't that suggest high salt levels or other additives that have the same effect or that they swell up in the stomach and the water is need to make them pass through the system,

[EJ]

The diet is originally formulated based on a biological model. All vertebretates need a specific ratio of nutrients. So the model is the starting point. Then come the trials and the formula is tweeked. What test they do or how it is tweeked I don't know but I figure if something was wrong with the formula the problem would have popped up by now after more than 20 years later.

As to the salt. I can only guess it is Sodium Chloride which is an esential nutrient.

Originally Posted by stells

but but but yes i am going to triple post it may not taste salty to us but that surely doesn't mean there isn't much there and do we know how much salt a tortoise can handle in its system?