I have a pair of Geochelone elegans. Check out the post below on Raising Indian Star Tortoises in Singapore and I outline the diet that I feed mine, as well as the daily husbandry routine that I use. I use mixed grass clippings in its "sunning enclosure" as a substrate and only keep in indoors at night time. Mine prefers fresh grass to dried grass or hay. All the store bought vegetables I feed are what are sold as "organic" in the US.

A note on Sri Lankan Star Tortoises vs. Indian Star Tortoises: They are the same species and there is not a subspecies. They are indistinguishable as far as DNA results go, as I have been told by someone familiar with the study that has already been conducted. In fact, many Indian Star Tortoises are pushed in the trade as Sri Lankan Star Tortoises, simply because of the pattern involved; many southern Star Tortoise variants are completely indistinguishable from their Sri Lankan neighbors.

I have seen hundreds of these come in every couple of months or so and have learned from some dealers and those with ties to the Indian exporters about the subterfuge involved. There is no way to prove that someone actually has a Sri Lankan Star Tortoise, unless they have actual proof it came from Sri Lanka. Very few could actually produce that proof.

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• Indian Star Tortoise - FLherping, Sun Mar 5 21:11:06 2006
• RE: Indian Star Tortoise - Columbia, Sun Mar 5 22:43:42 2006
• Time in which they are breedable? - FLherping, Sun Mar 5 23:06:06 2006
• RE: Time in which they are breedable? - Columbia, Sun Mar 5 23:32:38 2006
• RE: Time in which they are breedable? - ScottE, Mon Mar 6 08:19:19 2006
• I use timothy hay for my SLS - 805Ringo, Mon Mar 6 00:35:54 2006
• RE: Indian Star Tortoise - mrcota, Mon Mar 6 02:41:20 2006