Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hello My first post here!

I have a single tortoise, a male Greek named Nigel. Unfortunately I've run into some problems with his diet. I live in an apt (Nigel lives in a large enclosure on my porch) and therefore do not have a yard, otherwise I would grow a pasture mix (or something similar) and let Nigel graze off those grasses.
Right now he eats Timothy hay and supermarket veggies. But we all know supermarket veggies aren't the best:-

So I've been doing some research, trying to find a commercial diet I could mix with the timothy hay. I know Mazuri comes highly reccomended, but I've found that the Ectotherm Grassland Tortoise Diet seems to have a better nutritional analysis:
Mazuri: 15% protein and 18% fiber
vs.
Ectotherm: 6% protein and 25% fiber

And the main ingredients are timothy hay, water, bermuda grass, big blue stern, dandelion, prickly pear cactus, hibiscus flower, and cactus fruit.

This seems to be the best commercial food I've found and an excellent substitute to supermarket vegetables. Has anyone had any experience feeding this to their tortoises?

My sulcatas love the Yummies.

I have it to. The cactus yummies are good to. I find taht my guys don't always eat them. I tend to just use it when I am low on greens or just for some variety. Some people have mixed opinions on them but I think it is just b/c it is new, you know how sometimes people are afraid of new things besides why fix it if it not broken.

Have you tried growing some grazing mixes in some pots. My guys are all indoors and I have pots setup outside to grow seeds of various grazing mixes and then I just clip some of and feed it to them.

Also try different hays besides timothy. Ectotherm also sells nutribale wihch is bermuda, timothy and something else I can't remember.

Good luck
Christina
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0.0.1 Hatchling Indian Star Tortoise (Sitara)
1.1 Russian Tortoise (Willy & Mikey)
0.1 Ornate Box Turtle (Lily)
1.0 Red Eared Slider (Chester)
0.0.2 White's Tree Frog (Kermit & Phil)
0.0.1 Red eyed Tree Frog (Justin)
0.0.1 Big Eyed Tree Frog
0.0.2 Bubbling Frog
0.0.2 Tiger Leg Tree Frogs (Akari & Shiro)
0.0.3 Amazonian Milky Tree Frogs
0.0.1 Dwarf Megophrys
0.0.2 Rainbow Burrowing Frog/Ornate Hopper
0.0.1 Asian Blue Webbed Gliding Tree Frogs
0.0.1 Albino Pacman Frog
0.0.1 Budgett's Frog
0.0.2 Starry Night Reed Frogs
0.1 Praire Dog (Timmy)
0.2 Chinchillas (Layla & Snickers)
0.3 mice
0.1 dog (Holly)
2.0 Cats (Champ & Bear)

Oh and a husband

try micro gardening or turn your tort enclosure into a tortvivarium/planetarium or whatever you want to call it, make it an interesting looking micro habitat rather than those runs of the mills pet hospital bunkbed, it should be managable since he/she's your only one (for now?)... not the whole zee and two noughts