What do I feed my tortoise?

Each breed of tortoise has different dietary requirements. I have prepared a care sheet for each of the different tortoise breeds I sell and on each care sheet there is a handy summary of how to offer a balanced diet as well as examples of foods you can offer your species of tortoise.

When possible it is always best to feed your tortoise fresh tortoise-safe weeds and flowers (and grasses if your breed of tortoise should have grasses).

What to feed a LEOPARD tortoise?

If you are thinking of getting a leopard tortoise, the video below explains their dietary requirements in detail. It includes a lots of examples of tasty treats for them for a year-round healthy diet:

What to feed an INDIAN STAR tortoise?

You can also follow the recommendations in the above video for Indian Star tortoises as their diet is almost identical to Leopards (except for the ratio of grasses to weeds/flowers - for Indian Star tortoises I recommend 50% grasses with 50% weeds/flowers).

What to feed a MEDITERRANEAN SPUR-THIGHED (“Greek”) tortoise?

For Mediterranean spur-thiged or Greek tortoises, you can also follow the recommendations in this video except skip the grasses/hays section completely as they have 100% weeds and flowers in their diet.

Winter feeding

When it is not possible to feed fresh weeds/flowers/grasses you can buy bagged supermarket salad mixes (please refer the video above for which bagged salads are safe as some contain foods that are harmful for your tortoise). I also use a dried fibre mix, again this is discussed in the video above.

Dried foods

I personally do not recommend the dried tortoise pellet foods offered as a “complete tortoise diet” as these tend to be too high in protein and not a healthy diet for your tortoise. Fresh is best in my opinion.

The only dried foods I recommend are the testudo fibre mixes as it has over 60 different varieties of grasses, herbs, weeds, flowers ensuring a diverse and balanced diet for your tortoise. The dried foods should be mixed with their usual fresh foods.

You can also use dried flowers, dried weeds, dried grasses/hays (for relevant species) but some tortoises do not like these and I would only recommend these as a “topper” or a light sprinkle over their fresh foods.

Variety is key to keep your tortoise healthy.

Supplements

I also recommend that supplements are sprinkled on their food, 6 days a week. The supplements required are a calcium powder and a vitamin/mineral powder (these supplements are especially important for young/sub-adult tortoises and egg-laying females).

My recommendation is to feed calcium powder on alternate days to the vitamin/mineral powder, 6 days a week. For example:

Monday/Wednesday/Friday = Calcium powder

Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday = Vitamin/mineral powder.