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Posted by brad wilson on April 15, 2003 at 20:05:03:
In Reply to: Re: Lazy or realistic?... posted by Niki on April 15, 2003 at 19:38:02:
: (I wish he would eat hay believe me).
I haven't read all of your posts, so forgive me if I'm asking a question you've alread answered.
Have you tried mixing moistened hay into the Mazuri?
I've found that if I feed my russians and leopard tortoises too many greens, they get the runs. Not enough fiber.
They won't eat much grass, and they definitely won't eat dry hay. But if I moisten timothy hay and mash it into moist Mazuri (which they like) they'll eat it and get lots of fiber. I can even reduce the amount of Mazuri (to a point) and they'll still eat the hay.
I try to make the Mazuri (and sometimes Pretty Pets) as small a portion of the diet as possible. Used mainly in the winter.
It's made of items you wouldn't normally feed your tortoise: soybeans, corn, oats, wheat, molasses, etc. Each of these items has drawbacks - goitrogens, oxalic acids, calcium deficient, etc. But it is otherwise nutritionally dense - sort of like eating a protein + vitamin supplement instead of normal food. So, in my view, it's easy to overload on it. The normal feedback loop that tells a tortoise that it is full when feeding on low-nutritional value grasses may kick in too late when feeding on something like Mazuri.
But now I'm just speculating.
Feed your animals, weigh them, look at their overall condition.
