How to feed a small red-eared turtle at home?

To have an exotic pet at home is a wish that can be easily realized today. But before you start it, you need to learn more about the conditions of keeping such a "friend" at home. One of the important points is nutrition, the slightest errors in this regard will lead to a disastrous result.

From the publication you will learn about what to feed the little red-eared turtle: what it prefers from plant foods, and what food of animal origin can be given to it. Let's also talk about industrial feed for domestic reptiles.

At home, feeding a small aquatic red-eared turtle needs more animal food, its diet should consist of 70% of such food. The list of products should include:

• rabbit meat (lean varieties);
• turkey meat;
• beef;
• horse meat;
• offal (liver, heart, stomach);
• fish (lean and boneless) - it can be hake, sprat, cod and so on;
• snails and live fish in the aquarium;
• cottage cheese (sometimes in small quantities).

As for the fish, the large bones need to be removed, but the small ones are better left - this is a source of invaluable calcium for the aquatic animal. TOa red-eared turtle should be fed with a variety of foods, which is why sometimes you need to offer it seafood:

• shrimp (preferably green);
• squid meat (raw);
• octopuses.

In the pet store, buy a flour beetle for your exotic pet, catch grasshoppers and bugs in the summer, sometimes you can give a bloodworm to feast on. But with domestic cockroaches, be careful, they can be poisoned.

Do not overfeed your turtle with meat: it can become deficient in vitamin A, leading to rickets and destruction of its shell. If she lost coordination, she began to eat poorly, the shell became fragile, urgently give vitamin D.

You can buy ready-made herbal formulations for reptiles, but in addition to dry food, red-eared turtles feed on field plants. Their predominance is especially important in the food for not young, but older individuals.

Red-eared turtles happily prefer treats from such plants as:

• plantain;
• dandelion;
• Clover;
• coltsfoot.

They eat well barley and oat seeds (preferably germinated). In addition, different vegetables can be offered to reptiles of different ages:

• tomatoes;
• cucumbers;
• pepper (Bulgarian sweet);
• pumpkin pulp;
• carrot;
• beets;
• cabbage (white cabbage).

It is better to scald the chopped leaves of plants and pieces of vegetables. Berry and fruit food is formed from the following fruits:

• raspberries;
• plum;
• apricot;
• apples;
• pears.

Citrus fruits without peel allowed... For sharpening teeth, it is good to put a twig of any fruit tree in the reptile's aquarium. You can feed the red-eared turtle with edible mushrooms. But mushrooms are not given as often as fruits and vegetables: a mushroom diet is permissible no more than once every 7 days.

Domestic reptiles are not given food from the human table. By the way, the turtle will eat it with pleasure, but then it may have serious liver problems.

There are individuals who refuse to feed at home and prefer only industrial food. In this case, manufacturers offer nutritious snacks with daphnia and vitamins for turtles (Tetra ReptoDelica Snack).

From the same series, there are portions of dried grasshoppers (Tetra ReptoDelica Grasshoppers) and dried gammarus (Tetra Gammarus), as well as calcium blocks (Tetra ReptoCal) and vitamin concentrates (Tetra ReptoSol). Calcium is needed for building bones and shells, which is why it is needed especially by young turtles.

And vitamins help to strengthen the immune system and improve the life processes of reptiles. Be sure to introduce bone meal into the menu of reptiles. This is necessary to replenish the body with minerals. As a substitute for bone meal, you can grind egg shells.

Vitamins are added to any food, you must follow clear instructions for their use. And no matter what food the reptile eats, there should always be fresh, clean water near it. From time to time, you can bring the animal yourself to a vessel with water and offer it to drink.

The fact is that in the red-eared turtle, saliva does not separate and it just needs to moisten the oral cavity. And as for the amount of food, then she is given as much food as she can overpower in half an hour of food intake. Fix somehow this volume, and feed your pet with this portion always.

Young individuals are fed every day, and as they grow, they are transferred to 2-3 meals a week. Of course, the best solution would be to alternate in the diet of plant food, animal origin, it is also worth introducing ready-made dry groundbait several times a month.