Boxies Try A New Food!!!

I am so excited by this!!!! :cheers: I was reading on the ks.com boxie forum about boxies enjoying fresh mushrooms and blackberries. Now mine had never shown interest in tomatoes, strawberries, melon, any lettuce, anything like that, but I thought, what the heck, it's wild blackberry season- I'll give it a try! They had _only_ ever eaten live things like nightcrawlers, roaches, pillbugs, Junebugs, and slugs. I thought if I mixed a salad of slugs and blackberries, maybe I could get Fagalo to try them! No need to try to trick her, she dug into the blackberries as if she'd been waiting for them her whole life! She ended up eating a huge handful, plus about eight slugs.



Heck- why not give Krusty a shot? He's even more finicky and suspicious- but he loved them too!



And to top it off, Koko (desert tort) ate a mulberry leaf I picked off his new $120 tree! Just like everyone said he would!

Nanci

That's great! I know first hand how frustrating it is when your box turtle won't eat things that box turtles are supposed to love. Mine would only eat moving things and anything yellow (banana, corn). My friend's turtle would eat leafy greens all day. :shrugs:

I love when you post about your torts Nanci. I have only ever kept turtles so its nice being educated by someone like yourself!

I know how finicky the wee buggers can be when it comes to thier greens, my red eared terrapin would never touch his greens, but would eat handfuls of fresh prawns and shrimp!!

Seeing their happy faces over those berries makes me feel hungry myself. :crazy02:

Cute torts!

These are the box turtles, not the desert torts. Fagalo is an Eastern box, Krusty is a Florida box. Here's Koko the tort for comparison:



I'm going to try them on wild mushrooms when I get home- my yard is loaded after three days of rain...

Nanci

Torts don't eat toads! :eek1: Seriously though, my boxy caught and ate a spring peeper once. It was horrible to watch.

My neighbor used to have a Chinese box who loved meatballs of all things. Raw ones of course but still... I loved turtle sitting for them!

Thats so cool, I wish my russian torts could eat fruit.

Tortoises have a much more particular diet than turtles.

Nanci

Nanci
thanks for this post. Its given me some more ideas for our little box turtle that we recently received from our local herp society. We were told this was a non feeder and would not eat for the original owners. We were told it was a wild caught about a year ago?? But then again when a herp society gets unwanted animals nobody ever tells the truth to the herp society when they dump their unwanted pets.

He now is eating like a pig for us. He has eaten some (not a lot) Chicken flavored wet dog food (read that in a book), Strawberries, worms and crickets. We have tossed in various greens (lizard salad) but haven't seen him eat that. But he is doing much better in our care, we give a dose of Calcium every once in awhile so he doesn't get MBD.

Mine LOVE anything live and kicking. Moths, Junebugs, roaches (you don't get the good ones up there, though!!) sow or pillbugs are a favorite, snails, slugs, grasshoppers, crickets. I buy tubs of 12 nightcrawlers at Petsmart- but there are a lot more bait shops in MN.

Nanci

Nanci said:

Mine LOVE anything live and kicking. Moths, Junebugs, roaches (you don't get the good ones up there, though!!) sow or pillbugs are a favorite, snails, slugs, grasshoppers, crickets. I buy tubs of 12 nightcrawlers at Petsmart- but there are a lot more bait shops in MN.

Nanci

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Here in Ohio roaches are a bad word. nobdy want them

Nanci said:

Mine LOVE anything live and kicking. Moths, Junebugs, roaches (you don't get the good ones up there, though!!) sow or pillbugs are a favorite, snails, slugs, grasshoppers, crickets. I buy tubs of 12 nightcrawlers at Petsmart- but there are a lot more bait shops in MN.

Nanci

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you are right, as my girlfriend would say, you can keep your Floridian cockroaches. As for bait, yeah, there is a bait shop right down the street from us. We buy the worms for my turtles, well I no longer have them. A local petshop wanted them to sell. So I gave them to her. After all she gives me snakes in the long run. I also pick up large suckers for my Water snake as well. I buy the dead ones for 25 cents a piece. 2 a week and she is happy. I say she is my cheapest snake yet to feed. lol