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My wife had bought a large (2.6 pound bag) of turtle food sometime in the past, well I ran out of that a few weeks back. Since then, I've bought some smaller containers at local pet stores, but it seemed like every few weeks I was going back for more. So, I thought to myself, I should look into buying another big bag of turtle food. Come to find out, that 2.6 pound bag is like $27, then when you add shipping costs ( cause I haven't seen a big bag locally ), it comes out to like $32, for 2.65 pounds. Still cheaper then buying small containers and having to go back to the pet store repeatedly....

However while looking for big bags, I eventually stumbled upon Mazuri Fresh Water Turtle Diet, eventually reading that if you buy it direct from Mazuri it's cheaper then you can get from typical pet supply places that may carry it (it's still not very widely available, even at online pet stores ). So, I go looking ... well, you can buy a 25 pound bag for ah.. $49, plus tax and shipping , or a grand total that's less then $60.

So, I think to myself... wow, I could buy 25 pounds of turtle food for less then it would cost me for 5 pounds of the stuff I had been using. Me being a sucker for good deals, I order myself 25 pounds of Mazuri Fresh Water Turtle food... It was supposed to take like a week to get the good price on shipping, but low and behold I get a knock on my door just two days after ordering it, UPS guy walking away says... package for you... I look down and see this card board box. Think , now what'd my wife buy. I look at the label on the package, and it said something like Purina , Indiana. I think... OMG, that must be that turtle food...

So, then I open it up... pull out a bag with a Crocodile/Alligator on it. I'm thinking they must have sent me the wrong stuff.. but then there is a smaller label on the package that says it's Fresh Water Turtle food... But anyway, this bag makes me start to think I turned into a zoo keeper over night.

Now I'm wondering, what I'm going to do with all this Turtle Chow... Any suggestions?

Bag it up and sell it to people on here for a small profit Heck I'll take some!

Well, I don't want or need to make a profit, but if I could help other turtle owners out , I'd be more then willing to send some out at cost + shipping... but I suspect that shipping will be more then the cost of the food.

I guess I'll have to look into what it would cost to ship something.. Seems like with US post, it'd wind up costing a minimum of about $5 or $6 per pound just for shipping. Still under $9 total cost to get it to some other turtle owner in the USA. Not sure if there's anyway to get cheaper shipping through UPS or FedEx... but it's been my experience that individuals wishing to ship packages, wind up paying top dollar.

Here's a picture of the back of a retail bag for comparison:

When it was harder to buy, people would rebag it and sell on eBay. Not a bad way to recoup costs. Any extra maybe can go to a rescue or shelter.

I went down to the post office today, to find out about shipping options... It seems it's about like I said before... basically , the flat rate shipping boxes are about as economical as anything.

The small flat rate boxes, won't hardly even hold a pound of the food however. Those are like $6, and could probably only hold 14 ounces of this turtle food, if I were to try to sell 14 ounces at my cost, plus shipping, it'd wind up being about $9 for 14 ounces. That's probably quite similar to the price you'd pay for Turtle food at a pet store in a 14 ounce size. To some degree, this isn't hardly worth the effort, but if someone really wanted to try some of this at that price, I'd likely be willing to box it up and such.

It starts to look a little more attractive to a buyer, if they wanted 7 pounds... I can fit 7 pounds in a medium sized USPS flat rate box, those cost like $13 to ship... It'd end up costing around $33 for 7 pounds of this food. At that price, it's probably half the price of what you'd ever be able to get this for in a store, or even online.

But then, I'd probably only want to part with maybe 10 pounds of this food, cause I figure I can go through 15 pounds on my own before it would spoil (I'm assuming I can freeze some, and maybe extend the life of the product out to maybe 18 months.

If anyone knows someone who keeps turtles in southeastern Michigan, either a individual or rescue operation, or whatever, I could darn near give the stuff away. $2.7 a pound is all it cost me and I really don't feel any need to profit on it. I might consider just donating some to a rescue place... but with the price of gas and/or shipping, I wouldn't really want to put much money into trying to get rid of the stuff.

How do you go through so much turtle food??? How many turtles do you have?? I have 360g container of food for 1 turtle that will last me more than 1.5 years. 5 pellets tops a day

I have two turtles. I feed more or less nothing but pellets. I feed them about 1 tablespoon of food per day. I have one turtle that is about 8 inches long , the other about half that size. I also have fish in the tank , and what the turtles don't eat , the fish do. But anyway, I don't know if I could feed much less a day without them being unhappy.

I will say this however... in the past, my turtles tend to not eat as much during winter months. So, I'm not 100% sure I'll be feeding them the 1 tablespoon every single day of the year, but I do know that I go through enough turtle food that buying in bulk will be worth the effort. Even so, ideally, it'd be nice if I could split the large back with a couple other local people, but unfortunately, at this point , I don't know any other local turtle keepers.

Darn the USPS postage rates are funky...

After making one shipment of some excess turtle food, I've come to the following conclusions...

I could ship 4 pounds of this turtle food anywhere in the continental US for $21 total ( cost of $5.25/lb ). ( that using a Regional Rate Box A from USPS )
Anything more then 4 pounds wont' fit in a Regional Rate Box A so if someone wanted 5 pounds, a different box would have to be used, anything less then 4 pounds, the price per pound would go up due to shipping costs

I could ship up to 7 pounds of this turtle food anywhere in continental US for $31 total ( cost of $4.5/lb ). ( using Medium size Flat rate box from UPS )
If only shipping 5 pounds, cost per pound would be $5.25 or $27.5 total)

So if anyone in the USA would like some Mazuri fresh water turtle food, I could get it to you for $5.25/lb. or less, depending on how much you wanted. I have roughly 10 pounds that I'd be willing to part with at these prices.