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We advise that you feed you Sulcata on a diet of dark leafy greens in small amounts with hay and grasses as it's main diet. Timothy hay is available in Hong Kong and is an excellent food for your tortoise.
Sulcata torts evolved in the semi-arid regions of Africa just south of the Sahara Desert. As a result, their digestive tracts have evolved to handle low-nutrient, high-fiber foods like dry grasses and weeds. These tortoises are very good at extracting nutrients from what would appear to be not-very-nutritious foods. Therefore, if you try to maintain your sulcata tortoise on a diet of grocery store produce ONLY, your tortoise may develop significant health problems (including kidney and liver damage) that can drastically shorten its lifespan.
There are basically two different ways to change your tortoise from the veggies that it likes to the veggies that it should be eating:
1. The "tough-love" approach: You completely stop giving the tortoise all the "bad" stuff like lettuce, greens, veggies, and so forth. Provide only the grass and/or grass hay. Eventually, when he gets hungry enough, he'll give in and eat it.
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2. You gradually wean the tortoise off the stuff it likes, but which isn't good for it, and onto a better diet.
Sulcata tortoises are a lot like human children-once they get spoiled on grocery store produce, they want to eat the stuff they like, even though it's not necessarily what's good for them. However, unlike human children, I can pretty much guarantee you that your tortoise won't starve to death if he doesn't eat for a week or two. Sulcata are native to the Sahel region of Africa, which is just south of the Sahara desert. Thus, they are used to very meager supplies of food, and can easily handle not eating for a while, if they are healthy to begin with. That is why the "tough-love" approach can work, provided that the owner isn't too soft-hearted and doesn't give in before the tortoise does.....
But if you're soft-hearted (like us), it may be easier on your conscience to change his diet gradually to a more healthy one. Here is how you can gradually wean him off the greens and veggies, and onto grass and/or grass hay:
Put several large handfuls of grass/hay into a plastic bucket. Use kitchen scissors to cut it up into shorter lengths. Don't worry about making all of it the same size, just chop it up. When you're done, you should have grass hay that ranges from three or four inches blades all the way down to "dust-particle-size." We have a specific, 5-gallon plastic bucket and lid that we devote strictly to keeping this chopped-up grass hay on hand.
When you are going to feed your tortoise: Pull a handful of the chopped-up grass/hay from the bottom of the bucket (so that you get some of the smaller pieces and the "dust", too) and put it into a gallon-size ziplock plastic bag. Then add a small amount of grated carrot (one-quarter of a small carrot is plenty) and and a small amount of chopped-up greens (one-half of a Romaine leaf, or about a quarter of a collard green leaf) to the bag. If you are using a calcium supplement, you can also add a small sprinkle of it to the bag.
Zip the bag almost all the way closed, then inflate the bag as much as possible and zip it completely shut. Shake the sealed, inflated bag to mix the grass, carrots and greens (and calcium supplement) well.
Feed a medium sized handful of this mixture to your tortoise every other day. (Note: this mixture does not keep very well-it tends to get moldy. So you should make it fresh every time you feed your tortoise.)
When you start this process, the mixture will be mostly greens, some carrot, and some grass. At each feeding, you gradually reduce the amount of greens and carrots, and increase the amount of grass. Over the course of about two to four weeks, you keep increasing the grass hay and reducing the greens and carrots.
Your eventual goal should be a mixture of about 75 percent hay, 20 percent greens, and 5 percent (or less) grated/chopped carrot. This is a good basic diet for sulcata tortoises.
Another important tip: Make this grass/greens/carrot mixture (but don't add the calcium supplement to it yet) in the morning and then let it sit until lunchtime (or for a couple of hours at room temperature). The dry grass will soak up the liquid from the greens and grated carrots and rehydrate slightly. Just before you feed it to your tortoise, add the calcium supplement, then shake the ziplock bag well to mix it in thoroughly. Your tortoise might be more interested in it because everything will smell like carrots and greens.
While you are in the process of changing the tortoise's diet, I strongly recommend soaking him every day to make sure that he remains properly hydrated. The tortoise will need to take in more water (either by soaking or by having access to a water dish if he will drink by himself), particularly if he's going to be eating dry grass hay.
Once you have gotten your tortoise used to eating grass hay on a regular basis, then you can resume giving him dark leafy greens like collard greens, mustard greens, dandelion greens, or arugula-but ONLY in small quantities, and ONLY once a week or so as a supplemental food. The dark leafy greens are also a great way to get the tortoise to eat calcium supplements and vitamin supplements. Again, this is where ziplock bags come in very handy.
Simply wash the greens and shake the excess water off well. Then tear up one or two leaves as if you were making yourself a salad. Put the torn-up leaves into a ziplock bag. Sprinkle a small amount of vitamin powder, and a slightly larger amount of calcium powder onto the greens, then zip the bag almost closed. Inflate the bag slightly, then close it completely and shake it well. The powder will coat all the leaves more or less evenly. Give the powder-coated leaves to your tortoise. We give our sulcata torts a small handful of these greens, covered with calcium carbonate powder and a small amount of vitamin powder, once a week.
You can buy powdered vitamin supplements and powdered calcium carbonate in most pet stores, or online at various places. The recommended brand is Nutrobal.
Do not overuse the vitamin supplements! Too much can actually be worse than too little! You only need to provide these twice a week at most. However, the calcium supplement can be added to food at each and every feeding.
In the wild, tortoises spend their nights in underground burrows that have a much higher humidity level than the desert outside the burrow. This "high-humidity microclimate" inside the burrow helps the tortoise stay properly hydrated. When we keep tortoises in pens or enclosures, taking away their ability to dig burrows, we have to compensate by providing them with water. The problem is that some tortoises won't voluntarily drink, even if you put a water dish into its pen or enclosure. Therefore, you should get into the habit of soaking your tortoise regularly.
How often you soak it depends on how big it is. Hatchling torts probably should be soaked for 15 minutes or so every day. Tortoises over a year old can get away with at least three soakings a week. As the tortoise gets even larger, soakings can be done even less frequently, but probably at least once a week.
Make sure that the water is lukewarm, and no deeper than the base of the tortoise's neck. It's best to use some sort of container that you can wash out and sterilize with bleach after each soaking. For small tortoises, a plastic dishpan or plastic storage box works well. For larger tortoises, use a large plastic container.
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發表於 09-3-4 06:01 PM
發表於 09-3-4 06:14 PM
送左比人-.-有幾大隻?可以買麻=.=