Feeding and Nutrition :: My turtle will not eat any Vegetables...any ideas?

[jhaza]

My turtle, "Mango" will not eat any vegetables. He is six years old and has always loved his turtle pellets and occasional minnows, but when I try to give him any vegetables he won't eat them at all. I know that RES are suppose to have a good vegetable diet, especially the older they get, but he won't touch the stuff. What should I do? Any suggestions? Thanks. -Josh

[steve]

Try sliced carrots, aquatic plants and lettuce tied down with a veggie clip.

[planet.caravan]

Also maybe try dipping the veggies in some tuna water, or if you hav acces to freeze dried shrimp crush them into a powder and then coat the veggies (like sweet potato for example) and try to then feed it to your turtle

[jhaza]

Thanks! I will try all of your suggestions.

[svaughan]

Josh, you should check out the list of good and bad veggies on Redearedslider.com under the nutrition section. The lettuce you feed your turtle shouldn't be iceberg, and no spinach!

I'm still trying to figure out how to feed my turtles vegetables, and they're 14 years old.

Carrots are fine for them but shouldn't be a staple in their diet. If you do want to feed them carrots, I've heard that shredding the carrots and cooking it with some extra-lean beef (like meatloaf) works, and then you can slowly phase out the beef altogether and they'll eat the carrots like it's nothing.

If only they'd do this for lettuce and dandilion leaves!

[Marcus.85]

Just let the veggies absorb the water you wash your fish in for a couple of hours, that way it'd be more appealing to them.
It worked for mine, and after a while they started eating regular veggies, because of habit.

[Seroster]

Heh, I don't know why my little guy/gal took so readily to vegitables & such. He'll eat just about anything we hold over his tank. I imgagine I could get him to eat rocks if I dangled them over the water where he could see them.

[Doc_Moore_J]

My turtles love tomatos and carrots. Not crazy about greens. Have you read the thread about the jello shots? Thats how I get my RES to eat their veggies. I vary mine from the thread recipe depending on what I have, but my turtles are totally nuts over them.

[chantal.charbonneau2426]

My little girl doesn't like veggies either or fruit for that matter. I am still working on trying to find something that she'll like. I never thought of carrots until I read this and I actually think we have some baby carrots in the fridge so I think I might try that today! And I'm not sure if my boy will eat them or not as I just got him yesterday so I think experimenting and trying to mix things might be a good way to go.