Is my tortoise lacking something?

ElleSkywalker

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Afternoon,

Just been out in the garden with my tortoise Cedric, hes has a bath and been for a jolly scamp around the garden and drive, tormenting cats and ignoring all my carefully cultivated tortoise food (weeds ?) in favour of trying to eat the concrete path, bricks, stones and dog poo ? Obviously I stopped him eating the poo and small stones but let him sharpen his beak on the stones and path.

Am just wondering if his fondness for stones etc mean he is lacking something in his diet? He is only fed fresh food, this time of year mainly garden weeds and roses, in the winter salad. He gets supplementary calcium and has a cuttlefish for munching. He has some edible bedding too which he quite likes which is grass and wildflowers. He is a horsfield tortise and 5 years old :)
 

ElleSkywalker

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He is both of those things, he refuses to believe tortoises dont climb and enjoys terrorising the cats and dogs ? His shell is not ideal as he has some slight pyraminding from when he was a baby before I got him but the later bits are much smoother :)
 

Karran

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I'm not sure but mine is a 10 year old spur thigh- Geronimo the Destroyer and he has always eaten small pebbles and is kept in same way as yours.
I *think* that its just a digestion aid to help grind up food. Like birds eating grit and plant eating dinosaurs have been found with pebbles in their gizzard fossils.
As long as they're not massive, i've not been too worried as they seem to all come out the other end!
 
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