Why We Don’t Recommend Store-Bought Vegetables

Unlike wild forage that the tortoise chooses, a store-bought vegetable diet is not nutritionally complete. The supplements you add may not be in the proper proportion and may not provide all that the tortoise needs. Also, the vegetables are about 86% water. So when you mix them with MegaDiet, which is already complete, each meal is diluted in nutritive value and your additions tend to create an imbalance in the nutrients.

An article By Betty Burge, Tortoise Biologist, on Store-Bought Vegetables

from the Tortoise Group Newsletter, July 2007

The Time Has Come!        By Betty Burge

Years have passed and I realize that many of you are still combining vegetables with the MegaDiet.  By now most of your tortoises should be eating MegaDiet by itself with a large accompaniment of grass, ornamentals, dandelions, and the actual species that tortoises eat in the wild.  Making these plants available is very important, especially while your tortoise is learning that you are serious about giving it the best possible diet based on MegaDiet.

“Store Bought” Vegetables

Unlike wild forage, a “store bought” vegetable diet is not nutritionally complete and 86% water.

• So even when you mix them with MegaDiet, they dilute the nutritive value of each meal.
• Even when mixed with MegaDiet, they create an imbalance in the nutrients in a given meal.
• They are high in potassium. People rarely get enough, but tortoises are challenged by potassium and must get rid of it because in excess it is toxic. Vegetables in the typical salad for your tortoise lead to abnormally high levels of potassium that the tortoise has to get rid of.  To do that, protein is needed and a long drink of water.

So the more vegetables you offer, the more MegaDiet (a good source of protein) your tortoise must eat. If the protein in the diet is not sufficient, the tortoise breaks down its own flesh to rid the body of the excess potassium. Wild tortoises carefully select food plants that are low in potassium and high in protein.

You are not helping your tortoise by offering vegetables. Your tortoise seems healthy?  They can function but be under par and you never know.  How many times have you given up and offered your tortoises plain vegetables without any MegaDiet? That undermines the conversion to MegaDiet.  Tortoises remember and hold out for plain vegetables.  Give patience and “tough love” a chance.  

Do you work and don’t get home until late afternoon? You can leave pellets out in a shaded place. When you come home you can call your tortoise and feed it the flowers that it cannot reach. Place small juveniles on the grass and offer softened, moist, cool MegaDiet right there.  A hungry tortoise will learn to come out when it hears your voice and the temperature is not too hot.

If you provide some of the plants we recommend, you can forget about the salad mixes and give the MegaDiet by itself.  The sooner you do that, the sooner the tortoise will catch on.  They all do, and you save time and money.  The Community College of Southern Nevada’s Desert Garden Center has been very cooperative in providing an increasing number of native food and habitat plants. What fun I am having watching my tortoise take to these new species.