Re: Richard Fife..........

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Posted by Richard Fife on June 09, 2001 at 18:38:54:

In Reply to: Richard Fife.......... posted by John C. on June 08, 2001 at 12:34:52:

Sorry for the delay in answering your questions yesterday. My power was off for 6 hours yesterday and my standby power system is only used for cooling my greenhouse which includes pumping water from my well and other critical energy needs. My computer was off all day.

In my opinion the 15% protein in Mazuri tortoise diet is not out of line at all in fact I think we can starve our tortoises on some dry commercial diets that have very low maximum protein levels.

Generally we are accustom to seeing very low protein levels recommended for tortoises. It is very important to remember that those low levels of protein are a percentage of the total weight including the water. Water makes up a major part of the food item. Actually the protein percentage is much higher than you would expect once the water is removed. We discourage feeding iceberg lettuce because of its low nutritional value but it has 22% protein once the water is removed (I agree that it lacks other important nutritional elements and isn't a valuable food item). Protein is essential for growth and development!

Foods that are recommended for tortoises like romaine lettuce are 21.2%, and kale is 34.6%. It is like comparing apples to oranges when we compare protein percentages for dry foods to protein percentages of wet foods. There are lots of questions to tortoise nutrition and shell growth. We don�t have all the answers and I think we make a big mistake if we only include protein levels into the equation. I am including a link to a nutritional analysis published by the California Turtle & Tortoise Club. You will be shocked at the protein percentages that are included! Put the water back into those food items and the percentage of protein drops drastically (as seen in other published nutritional analysis ).

CTTC tortoise Diet Information

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: Sorry for the delay in answering your questions yesterday. My power was off for 6 hours yesterday and my standby power system is only used for cooling my greenhouse which includes pumping water from my well and other critical energy needs. My computer was off all day. : In my opinion the 15% protein in Mazuri tortoise diet is not out of line at all in fact I think we can starve our tortoises on some dry commercial diets that have very low maximum protein levels. : Generally we are accustom to seeing very low protein levels recommended for tortoises. It is very important to remember that those low levels of protein are a percentage of the total weight including the water. Water makes up a major part of the food item. Actually the protein percentage is much higher than you would expect once the water is removed. We discourage feeding iceberg lettuce because of its low nutritional value but it has 22% protein once the water is removed (I agree that it lacks other important nutritional elements and isn't a valuable food item). Protein is essential for growth and development! : Foods that are recommended for tortoises like romaine lettuce are 21.2%, and kale is 34.6%. It is like comparing apples to oranges when we compare protein percentages for dry foods to protein percentages of wet foods. There are lots of questions to tortoise nutrition and shell growth. We don�t have all the answers and I think we make a big mistake if we only include protein levels into the equation. I am including a link to a nutritional analysis published by the California Turtle & Tortoise Club. You will be shocked at the protein percentages that are included! Put the water back into those food items and the percentage of protein drops drastically (as seen in other published nutritional analysis ).

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