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I am new to turtledom but last year I rescued a female three toed and nursed her back to health from pneumonia. She is not the brightest turtle as the vet told me she has had previous veternarian care. She has two holes drilled into her shell because she must have been hit by a car and had to have stablization done with steel rods. She also has bits of her plastron missing on the edges from unknown previous encounters. My husband found her dodging cars and brought her home to me. She has since recovered and I am slowly reintroducing her to the outside world. My problem is, I can't get her to eat any greens! She loves fruit, slugs, junebugs, rollypolly and worms. She literally turns her nose up to greens. Any suggestions?

She sounds like a typical turtle - very picky eater - box turtles will only eat what THEY want to eat - not what you want them to eat!! Mary Beth

>>She sounds like a typical turtle - very picky eater - box turtles will only eat what THEY want to eat - not what you want them to eat!! Mary Beth

True, but in the wild they eat greens because they are HUNGRY and it's the only thing that doesn't run away. When we get them and begin to feed them all this luscious fruit and all the worms they can eat, why would they bother to eat their greens? Your turtle is spoiled Try this, leave the green leaves on her strawberries, mix greens with her mealworms, dip earthworms in baby food spinach. Try everything you can think of to get some greens into her. Good luck!
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Tess
Kingsnake.com Forum Host

Tess,
You are very right. She is SPOILED!!! Extremely ROTTEN!! She was so sick for so long, I fed her whatever she would eat! She especially got hook on mashed pumpkin. She had so much of that, she would only poop pumpkin! She finally tired of that and went on the cooked baby shrimp. Since the weather warmed she is taken outside more regularly and she hunts and eats junebugs, worms, slugs, etc. She still won't eat greens. Thanks for the suggestion!
Cindy

I'm new to turtles, too, but this trick works with tortoises that like to pick out their favorites and leave the rest. Run the greens through a food processor so they're chopped finely, and mix about a teaspoon with their food. Sometimes it helps to only try one type of green at a time. Usually they will accept the unwanted food in order to eat what they like, and then you can gradually add more chopped greens. She may never get to the point where she'll eat the greens in leaf form, but at least she'll be eating them.
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Sohni

0.1 Baja de L.A. Rosy Boa
0.1 Okeetee Corn Snake
1.1 Rubber Boas
1.0 Leopard Gecko
0.0.1 Hermann's Tortoise
0.0.1 Marginated Tortoise
1.0 3 Toed Box Turtle (rescued)
plus my kids' herps:
0.1 California King Snake
1.0 Mexican Rosy Boa
0.1 Leopard Gecko

Sounds like a good deal! I'll try it!!! Thanks!!!

Hi neighbor! What have you been trying?
Most of mine like romaine lettuce, but they might eat them one day, and not the next. I have tried things like collards and mustard greens since those are supposed to have more vitamins and calcium than romaine, but I've gotten a less enthusiastic response with those.

I tried something new this year with pretty good results, dandilions! I had often read that dandilion greens were very nutritious, but I'd see those in the yard and for some reason I couldn't imagine them eating dandilion leaves after they had rejected collards, etc. They didn't look as crisp as romaine.
But this year I pulled some pretty big dandilion leaves, rinsed them off so maybe they would look a little more appealing and put them in the pen, and I had several go for it. I've had pretty good luck with that, but sometimes my timing is off and the leaves wilt before they are eaten. So, another thing I do when I have time is transplant some dandilions into their pen.
That way they stay fresh until someone decides to eat them.
I have a garden where I have been letting dandilion's grow, even though they don't look great, because they get pretty big the longer you let them grow, and I want to have a supply for the turtles. I transplanted a pretty big plant into the pen last night, and when I checked today, the plant had been devoured. Anyway, I would try different things.

Have you tried superworms with this turtle? You can usually get them at petsmart and one way I get greens into finicky eaters is to feed romaine to the superworms, then I feed the superworms to the turtles. You can also "gutload" mealworms and crickets this way.

Hope this helps?

PS-Have you tried tomatoes yet?

Lisa,
I don't know what superworms are but I'll go to Petsmart this week and see if I can get some. At least they won't be as noisy as crickets to gutload. I have tried tomatoes but she isn't really fond of that either. She absolutely loves the canned lite fruit chunks. Probably not really good for her, but she sure gets excited when I get it out! I will try the dandelions and see what happens. Thanks!
Cindy