It turns out that if a tortoise is fed incorrectly, it begins to be capricious, does not eat well, or at all refuses food. Central Asian or steppe turtles are no exception. In order for your pet to feel at ease, competently build a baby's diet.
What to feed the landed Central Asian turtle?
To begin with, absolutely all turtles love vegetable food. Among useful plants are cabbage, pumpkin, watermelon, melon, lettuce, apples and dandelions. Will not give up and berries - raspberries, cherries and strawberries. Milk with the white bread soaked in it, too, will have to taste a shell animal.
What else can you feed the turtle ? Calcium is necessary for building and maintaining a fortress of bone covering - a shell. Therefore, fresh cottage cheese must be present in the menu. Manna and buckwheat cereals benefit from enriching the list of food products.
Do not think that turtles are vegetarian. They eat absolutely everything. Therefore, you need to be very careful when decorating terrariums. After all, almost everything that gets there will be "tested". So, do not deprive the pet of protein food. Sufficient one tablespoon of raw minced meat or halves of hard-boiled egg. But than feeding the home land tortoise with meat that is harmful to it, make up for the lack of protein, replacing the badly affecting product with a real worm that feeds aquarium fish. But do not overdo it. Any food of animal origin can lead to a digestive disorder. And it is better to replenish the turtle kitchen with beans, rich vegetable protein.
Do not overfill the ration of the turtle with tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots. They do not like them. This is easily explained, because in the wild these animals eat berries, desert plants or a carrion.
What to feed a tortoise in winter?
Usually in winter the turtles go into hibernation. But at home in this cold period is quite warm. Therefore, the turtle does not sleep, but simply becomes slow. What to feed in this period the tortoise at home?
Food can be left the same. But do not be surprised if your little friend can not overpower the summer daily rate. An approximate daily ration can be recalculated for the winter period, and it will look something like this:
- carrots - 30 grams,
- potato boiled - 20 grams,
- cabbage - 30 grams,
- white bread - 20 grams,
- fish oil - 0.5 grams,
- beet - 20 grams.
Just do not forget to enrich this list with herbs in the summer, for example, a dandelion, whose leaves can be picked up from a busy and polluted road and city.
Is it necessary to water a tortoise?
We told you what to feed home land tortoises. But, after all, they need water, although they rarely drink: one - once in one - two weeks, others have enough and one "date" with water a month. The frequency with which water procedures should be arranged depends on what the animal eats during a certain period of time.
Although, in order not to rack your brains, organize a bath day for the turtle once a week and a half. Pour a little less water into the basin than a centimeter. The pet's nose should be above the water level so that the land dweller of our planet does not suffocate. Plant the animal in water and leave it to enjoy for half an hour. Believe me, this time is enough for the baby to have time to get drunk and swim.