Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi All,

Fairly new to the tortoise world, hopefully someone can give me some advice. Found an oldy in Northern California and am trying to keep him outside.

My problem is that he seems totally disinterested in greens and flowers. Have gone to russiantortoise.net to find the appropriate greens and have tried many of them. At work I've got a gardener who doesn't spray or use any pesticides at all so I have a great source for a variety of the proper flowers. He just won't eat the food, and the weather here in California is damned hot right now (he's outside).

I tried this for a week with no luck, then mixed in a small percentage of mixed veggies (corn, greenbean, carrot), and he ate that, would pick through the greens to find the veggies. He pretty much only ate the veggies so I was worried he wasn't getting enough greens so I stopped the veggies altogther for about two weeks. I never saw him take a bite of the greens/flowers, so with the heat I decided he needed some food and moisture so I put out a small plate of the veggies and he ate like...well he hadn't eaten in two weeks

Did I not wait long enough, is it ok to feed him a mostly veggie diet, what am I doing wrong here. Any help would be appreciated. Curt

>>Did I not wait long enough, is it ok to feed him a mostly veggie diet, what am I doing wrong here. Any help would be appreciated. Curt

He needs to eat, especially when it's this hot. In my experience Russians don't drink much, so they need vegetation for moisture and nutrition.

Continue to feed him the veggies, it won't kill him anytime soon, but make sure you sprinkle on some calcium. Many popular veggies are low in calcium.

As for giving him greens and flowers, you'll need to slowly and skillfully slip this into the diet.

Start chopping the vegetables into smaller pieces. See if he'll eat them if they are diced pretty small. Don't do this all in one meal. Take time. Then, eventually, start chopping some greens and flowers into pieces of the same size he is eating. Mix them in. Maybe 10-20% greens and flowers, the rest is veggies. Don't make it two piles, one veggies and one greens, but make it a salad.

If he eats it, then feed him that mix for a few meals, then increase the % of greens, etc. You may never get him to 100% greens and flowers, but you never know. And you may always need to dice the food to fool him.

He probably doesn't recognize greens and flowers as food for whatever reason.

Even if it takes a year, it'll be OK. Just make sure he has calcium and a variety of veggies, and then very slowly work in the greens as suggested. And since he's outdoors, he may be grazing on plants out there. I know my russians have a lot of grass in there feces, but I rarely see them eat it.

Thanks for the info! I was getting worried, I was witholding food cause I wanted to feed him the right diet, but was really concerned about him croaking on me. I'll do the mixing in as you suggested.

Cheers,
Curt