Taking Care of the Red Footed Tortoise

The Red Footed Tortoises are friendly, cute, and they are great as pets. However, taking care of those animals is not as easy as you assume. It is true that it is not as hard as taking care of a dog, but a minimum of care is required if you want to have a healthy tortoise.

The Red Footed Tortoise eats leaf, fruits and supplements. It is important to ensure a good mix of those. This way, your turtle will be healthy for a long time. The leafy greens can ensure 70% of the food required by a red-footed tortoise. Lettuce, mustard greens and radicchio are perfect. At the beginning, only give them small quantities and see how they react. There are only general feeding rules for tortoises, but each one of them reacts differently to foods. While a tortoise might like the lettuce more than anything else, another one from the same species might not like it at all.

Unlike other tortoises that are really sensitive to certain types of fruits, the red-footed tortoise can eat a large number of fruits. Tomatoes, berries of any kind and apples are great. As for the supplements, you can choose the ones recommended by the veterinarian. When the turtle is still small, you need to ensure a solid quantity of calcium for the turtle. This can usually be taken from supplements. A turtle that lives freely in its natural habitat will know what food to choose, but if the tortoise stays at your home, it can only eat what you give her to eat, and this is why you should make sure that they have everything required.

The red-footed tortoise can be raised indoor and outdoor. For indoor housing, you should choose a special table that you can buy from the local pet store. Even if you choose to raise the turtle indoors, you should consider keeping it in the yard during the summer. When you make the switch from the indoor to the outdoor environment, take care of the turtle and make sure not to drop it. The carapace might be resistant, but the shock might damage internal organs of the pet. Moreover, if the carapace is not fully developed, a shock will probably damage its growth. The lighting is important for a tortoise also, as it should imitate the natural habitat perfectly. The tortoise also needs a place where it can hide, preferably made of stones to imitate a natural cave.