Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my female and male are refusing to eat their salad, they are only going for the mealworms, earthworms, and crickets.....is this ok?>
-----
~David - KDRKreatures
My Main Herps-
1.2 Bearded dragons (Ralph, Artemis, Cheech)
1.0 Veiled Chameleon (Chiquito)
1.0 Ringneck Snake (Striker)
1.1 Eastern Box Turtles (Athena and Mercury)

KDRKreatures-Home Page
My Email

i am having the EXACT same problem. thought that with worms in the mix they would get mouthfuls of salad as well. it seems that my two can discriminate quite easily and have fine motor control over their beaks when it comes to food choice. LOL

I think most turtles would rather eat protein than veggies. You could try feeding the crickets the veggies, then feeding the crickets to the turtles.

Sounds pretty typical to me. I have a group that seem to defy conventional wisdom in that the youngsters will pick out any fruit first when given homemade food, and the senior citizen gobbles up the meat first. So much for youngsters being more carnivorous than adults... That having been said, they all seem to have a weakness for strawberries.
Feeding the insects before you feed them to your turtles sounds like a good idea, and as much variety as you can manage might help prevent them from getting fixated on any one food.
The most effective ingredient may well be patience.

It's pretty well documented that a boxies diet is at least 60% insects. My group also loves any kind of berries such as strawberries, blackberries, blueberries...
Ed

Not only is it OK, it's expected. I have one turtle that eats broccoli but that's the closest to salad any of them have ever gotten. They eat fruit - apples, berries, peaches, cantalope, apricots, bananas - and boiled eggs (with the shell on) but crickets and meal worms remain their favorites and preferred. They also catch flies and moths. I'll put out a quartered cantalope, that they'll munch on, and then leave it. The flies and moths congregate and the turtles gather and munch on them.
e

My turtles used to love strawberries so I planted some in the yard and have a beautiful crop of berries this year which are being 100% ignored by each and every turtle - go figure.