Diet for Box Turtles

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(Taken from Mader's Reptile Medicine)

Items listen in italics will entice animals to eat. Adults should be fed 3 or more times per week in the morning and juveniles fed daily. Juveniles tend to be much more carnivorous than adults. For every feeding, dust food with calcium lactate, carbonate, or gluconate.  Every 1 to 2 weeks dust food with multivitamins (if vitamin-fortified foods are not available). Limit vitamin D-fortified foods to less than 5% of the total diet.

 50% Animal or High-Protein Foods: Earthworms, crickets, grasshoppers, slugs, wax worms, mealworms, silk moth larvae, other insects, adult maintenance dry dog food, trout chow, whole skinned chopped mice, baby mice (pinkies), goldfish, pelletted parrot diets, monkey chow bisquits, and sardines.

50% Plants (25% Fruits and 75% Vegetables)

25% Fruits: Tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, apples, grapes, cherries, peaches, pears, plums, oranges, nectarines, figs, melons (remove seeds), bananas, mangos, and grapefruit.

75% Vegetables. Dark leafy greens (mustard, collard, radish and turnip greens or tops, kale, cabbage, dandelions (leaves, stems, and flowers), bok-choi (pak-choi), broccoli, rape, squashes, sweet potatoes, carrots, thawed frozen mixed vegetables (peas, corn, carrots, green beans, lima beans); alfalfa, radish, clover, or bean sprouts; soaked alfalfa pellets, mushrooms, bell peppers, broccoli, green beans, peas in the pod, okra, and prickly pear (Opuntia spp) cactus pads (shave off spines). Feed less of spinach, Swiss chard, been greens, red leaf or romaine lettuce.