Is she greedy or is it me feeding too much? Teddy is a Horsfield, 5 months old and weighs almost 60gs, she is 6cms long. I give her 3 different types of weeds each morning about 9:30am. Whats your thoughts?

I think some people only feed their torts every other day, some feed 6 days a week, I'm not sure why, but one of the experienced ones will probably answer your question properly soon, Teddy does look lovely and healthy though :)

Hi Kerry..Aw Thanks! Yeah need to cut back on quantity i'm afraid! She wont like it though!

Hi Claire,

As i explained in my last post Teddy is too big for her age and unless you cut back on the food she will grow too big too soon. Sorry if that sounds harsh but you need to be cruel to be kind. In the wild horsfields can spend most of the year underground and only active for 3-4 months a year, they do this to escape the extreme temperature changes they endure, when they are active they will eat as much as they can and this seems to be programmed into even the captive breed babies. I keep and breed horsfields and all the wild ones ive rehomed over the years are half the size of the CB ones and this is because they do not stuff their faces all year. Im afraid im one of those that only feed mine 5 days a week and i just ignore them when they look at me and expect their dinner on the table :-) You need to toughen up with Teddy and show her who's boss.

Ali TPG

Hi I totally agree with you, Im too soft...I need to harden up...Its tough when Teddy comes to me when im near... I had a good conversation via email with the breeder who I got Teddy from and she said pretty much the same...As Im new to owning a tort, but am still learning. hopefully i'll toughen up.:) Thanks

Hi Claire,

It is hard and believe me ive learnt from my mistakes, we were all new to tortoise keeping once so please dont be too hard on yourself. Please dont say "hopefully i'll toughen up" you really do need to be harder than that

Let us know how you get on.

Ali

I will of course :) Thanks for your advice

Hi Calire,

This might help, the link below takes you to a list of work by a researcher who has studied Horsfields tortoises in the wild

http://www.cebc.cnrs.fr/Fidentite/bonnet/bonnet_publication.htm

Look under 2003 publications for

LAGARDE F., BONNET X., CORBIN J., HENEN B., NAGY K., MARDONOV B., NAULLEAU G. Foraging behaviour and diet of an ectothermic herbivore: Testudo horsfieldi. Ecography. 2003, 26, 236-242

Its a downloadable .PDF. If you sort through the study you'll see that, where horsfields tortoises originate from, they have a very limited period each year when they are active and feeding and that they only average 65 days a year when conditions are suitable for them to forage and this gives a rough total of 20 hours a year spent actually eating!  THe rest of the time its too hot or too cold and the tortoises are either hibernating or estivating ( a similar process when its too hot for them). When you transpose this to captive tortoises is easy to see why they are overfed. Their instinct in the wild is to eat as much as possible before conditions become unfavourable for them of course in captivity, outside of hibernation, this never happens so they continue to eat like the bad times are just around the corner, they're programmed to do it.

Hi Dave, Thank you for your info, I will have a good read when I got few moments:) I shall enjoy reading up on this..Thank you Claire&Teddy