Hello everyone, I am @ Magnet Defense Tower, thank you for your friends who like to climb pets to read my article again, I hope to discuss and share my hobbies and experiences with everyone.
Lovely Greek turtle
<h1>introduction:</h1>
It is said that the breeding of tortoises has become more and more popular among major players in recent years, but with the popularity of tortoise breeding, the feeding problem of tortoises has also emerged.
Novice friends often ask for help in major theme website portals, forums and other places in order to feed and meet the nutritional needs of tortoises, but often answer questions, or do not get substantive things, coupled with the most popular spread of the Internet to spread false rumors, it is also a headache.
A lot of times everyone likes to ask a question that is "yesterday I ate XX things for XX turtles, and today I seem to be a little unmoving." "But in fact, there is a big misunderstanding here, so today I will talk to you about the dietary needs of tortoises."
Herman turtle on the sand
<h1>To solve a problem, you must first understand the root cause</h1>
First of all, to judge the diet and nutrition problems of tortoises, it is necessary to understand the digestive system of tortoises.
Many people think that vegetarian tortoise feeding is simpler, but in fact it is not. Carnivorous or omnivorous crawler pets have fewer feeding problems due to their relatively simple needs, while herbivorous tortoises are more troublesome.
Different species of tortoises due to their wild origin and their own digestive system, their nutritional needs are actually not the same, the relevant nutritional knowledge is not much, so it is difficult to complete a comprehensive and appropriate herbivorous tortoise recipe.
In addition, we raise tortoises mostly in captivity, the lack of exercise and lack of natural light, the need to add fat-soluble vitamins A, D3, calcium powder and other additives to the feeding ingredients, which is easy to cause excess when the needs cannot be fully assessed, which is very dangerous.
I personally have always been not advocating the blind use of purchased feed feeding, in addition to subjectively believing that these feeds are actually not much different from instant noodles, the main reason is that it is impossible to determine its true composition, blind feeding leads to some serious consequences also abound, we must be cautious about this.
Tortoises are on the move
<h1>A brief explanation of the digestive system of tortoises</h1>
As we all know, nutrients such as proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are generally broken down in the small intestine. And these like plant fibers mainly rely on the large intestine through bacterial decomposition, which is why I said in the previous article why sometimes turtles will eat their own or their companions' poop tortoises eat poop. Didn't I give it a good meal? It's time to come to science. In fact, this is also in the cultivation and establishment of bacterial colonies in the large intestine.
The proportion of the large intestine length of the herbivorous tortoise is much higher than that of the carnivorous crawler. Normally, the proportion of the small intestine length of a tortoise is between 0.4 and 1 of the large intestine.
Among them, the highest ratio of small intestine and large intestine is the red-legged tortoise and the yellow-legged tortoise, both of which are basically 1:1 ratio. However, this ratio does not actually mean that their digestion ability is better, it reflects more in the diversity of their food choices.
Red-legged tortoise
<h1>Talk about the digestion time of tortoises</h1>
It's a very interesting topic about how much time it takes for tortoises to digest food, but it's not an idle egg pain topic.
Seriously, the process and speed at which tortoises digest food is related to many external and intrinsic factors. For example, external temperature changes, changes in activity; such as the frequency and amount of eating, and so on.
But one thing is certain, that is, for herbivorous reptile pets, they all need a higher body temperature to digest, including tortoises.
At lower temperatures, the turtle's gastrointestinal mobility is affected, but as soon as the body temperature begins to rise, its gastrointestinal vitality will also rise.
The most suitable temperature is about 25 ° C -35 ° C, with a high amount of activity, it will have an efficient role in promoting digestion.
Different species of tortoises have different digestion times for food, and the following is the research record I found that can be clearly expressed:
A 1968 study by MacKay and others found that the Gopherus agassizii desert gopher in California, USA, excreted 95 percent of the studied markers after 18 days (440 hours).
A 1982 study by Lawrence et al. showed that testudo graeca can excrete lettuce residue from the body in just 3-8 days at 28°C, but if European tortoises are fed less indigestible pastures, it can take 16-28 days.
In addition, a 2000 survey by Liesegang et al. found that the Geochelone nigra, at an average temperature of 23°C, took 8-18 days to fully digest food.
<h1>summary</h1>
Having said all this, whether it is experience or information, more or more to convey the idea that when we encounter the diet of tortoises, we should not only pay attention to what the tortoise ate last time, or what the tortoise ate yesterday. Tortoises don't immediately digest and excrete food, and we should return ingredients from many days ago, or even what we fed half a month ago.