Concerning the diahrrea:

If I feed my leopards nothing but grocery greens, their feces become very loose and runny.

They need more fiber. With a high-fiber diet their stools become solid.

Try grass, timothy hay, and some of the pelleted foods like Mazuri or Pretty Pets tortoise chows.

Now don't throw down a pile of grass or hay for the next meal and then come back saying "See, he won't eat it."

Chop up the grass (or hay) very finely, and mix it into chopped greens. Maybe run both through a food processor at the same time. Don't give the tort a chance to reject it - if he wants to eat greens he'll have to eat some fiber. Maybe start with just a touch of fiber and mostly greens, and slowly work more and more fiber into the meal over time.

The pellets also make a convenient way to add even more fiber to the diet. Mazuri pellets, which have a high fiber content, get very mushy after being soaked a couple minutes, and it makes it easy to mix with chopped hay or grass. Form the mazuri/hay mix into balls and feed them to the tort.

If you can't get the Mazuri, I've found the Pretty Pets tortoise pllets to be very popular with my leopards. It doesn't mush up well, so it's harder to mix in with grass/hay. But it has much more fiber than greens.

Hope this helps.

[ Hide Replies ]

• Sick Leopard... - xDeadVeggiex, Fri Mar 17 20:42:38 2006
• RE: Sick Leopard... - joeysgreen, Sat Mar 18 04:07:23 2006
• RE: Sick Leopard... - xDeadVeggiex, Sat Mar 18 11:20:43 2006
• RE: Sick Leopard... - EJ, Sat Mar 18 18:52:03 2006
• RE: Sick Leopard... - xDeadVeggiex, Sun Mar 19 01:43:18 2006
• RE: Sick Leopard... - bradtort, Sun Mar 19 20:23:01 2006