Hi,

Sorry another question.  Can a Tort have to much calcium?  Twiggy is now fed 6 days a week and has Nutrobol 1 day and Limestone flour the next.  There is also cuttlefish bone in the enclosure all the time.  Twiggy just eats and eats and eats the cuttlefish so much so it's in her poo!

Should I limit her on her addiction?  Or is she eating it because she needs it?

Thanks,

Row

It is possible for a tortoise to have too much calcium but it is very, vary rare for this to happen, so I shouldn't worry.  Although cuttlefish will supplement Twiggy's calcium intake I suspect it will be more because she enjoys chomping it and keeping her beak trim.

I know some people don't feed their tortoises on one day each week.  do you think it is because Twiggy might be hungry and does she do this more on the day you don't feed her?

Helen

Hi Helen,

I've only just started feeding them like this. I used to feed them every other day but now they have something every day as I wanted to increase their calcium intake with the limestone but not drop any of the Nutrobol.  She is ALWAYS hungry but her weight gain is approx 2 - 3 grams a month so I think she's getting enough food?

Do I need to worry?

Row

The weight gain is just fine - no worries i should just carry on as you are.  Twiglet is obviously doing really well. 

Helen

2-3 grams a month sounds fine to me too. I just read up a bit on calcium overdose, and it appears that excess calcium under normal conditions is just dealt with by hormones and passed out with the wee. But if there are very high levels of D3 (too much Nutrobal, for example -- but it is very hard to give too much Nutrobal), plus excess calcium, then there is a possibility that mineralisaton of the soft tissues could occur. However it is really difficult to get dangerous levels of D3 and Calcium together, so I'm sure you don't have anything to worry about. I'm sure Twiglet just knows what her body needs and she's eating calcium accordingly.e

Nina

Hi. I'm interested in Nina's comment that its hard to feed too much neutrobal. I'm always really careful, I thought the amount to be used was a small pinch on a whole bunch of leaves.  I haven't been trying to save money on neutrobal! - honest. But if there's no significant overdose risk I can be a bit more generous.

Ahh, now I'm not too sure how easy it is to feed too much Nutrobal. I know that when people ask, Andy Highfield (if my memory serves me correctly) always says that there is a wide margin of tolerance in Nutrobal and it is hard to feed too much, if you follow the instructions
But I'm the same -- the instructions say a pinch per kg of tortoise, and I have a tortoise that has only reached 200g, so that is a fifth of a pinch (whatever that is). And I do worry about over dosing so I'm careful to try and follow the instructions. I wonder if someone who knows more about this than me can say how much Nutrobal you would have to give to constitute an overdose.
I assumed that ROW was following instructions with the Nutrobal, and so it would be difficult to overdose in that way, but I'm a bit confused myself now!

Nina

Usually the tortoise exctretes the excess out of it's body in it's urine or faeces; so it is quite difficult to overdose.  This article might be helpful to read: http://www.britishcheloniagroup.org.uk/testudo/v5n3barrows.htm

Helen

Oops sorry a correction is needed.  I mean that with the exception of vitamin D it is difficult to overdose with vitamin and mineral supplements.  Sorry for misleading.

Helen

Its always seemed to me that Neutrobal is absurdly concentrated.  I wish they would make it a bit less so, as this would make it much easier for me to apply the right amount.  Nina mentions her 200g tortoise. If I've got a 19g tortoise, the amount of Neutrobal that it should have is too small for any mere mortal to have any hope of getting it right (even assuming the animal eats the right bit of leaf).  So I'm reassured that its not easy to overdose because my 'doses' of neutrobal are very approximate - and that is with my being as careful as I can.  The packet I have is 100g which is surley far too much for me to ever use within the sell-by date unless I had hundreds of torts.

Hi Ozric,

I couldn't have put it better myself! When I got Doris (formerly called Boris, but now called Little Dorrit, because she is so small for her age), she was about 100g and I really struggled with measuring out the Nutrobal. And no one ever mentioned how absurdly small the measured dose is, so I assumed most people had 2kg - 4kg tortoises! And it is such a waste of the Nutrobal if you only have one tortoise, or just several small ones -- I never get through more than a third the stuff before it goes out of date.

Regarding overdosing, here is something that Andy Highfield said in response to someone talking about overdosing on Vitamin D given orally:
"While it is true in
regard to the delivery of highly concentrated vitamin D-3 given by injection,
and there are certainly some risks in giving 'pure' D3 in very high doses
orally, the levels contained in Nutrobal (150 IU per gram) come nowhere even
close to being capable of inducing vitamin D3 toxicity by any reference I have
ever seen."

So hopefully we are not putting our torts at risk with our estimated doses.

Nina

LOL -- Oh yes, and I meant to mention how frustrating and how completely unscientific the prescription of 'one pinch per kg. of tortoise' is. How do you measure a pinch? There must be a big difference between a pinch from someone with big, fleshy fingers, and a pinch from someone with small bony fingers . OK, I've vented my rage on the Vetark people now, so rant over {g}.

Nina

When questioned, the man from Vetark said a pinch was based on the fingers of an average sized hand  

Mmmm now is my hand average size - that is the question?

Helen

The average hand, eh? I think it is amazing that years of work go into developing a nutritional supplement that is carefully balanced (46:1 Ca to phosphorus ratio, etc.) and then they say 'a pinch'. Why not one-eighth of a teaspoon (my US measuring spoons go down to one-eighth of a teaspoon, so I'd be happy with that), or 1 gram or something -- but "a pinch" -- what sort of a scientific measurement is that? (You can see I've got a thing about the Nutrobal instructions. {vbg})

Nina

There is a lot of conflicting information on Nutrobal. Certainly it is agreed that there is a possibility of over-dosing on oral vitamin D3.

We contacted Vetark some time ago regarding mixing Nutrobal with calcium/limestone flour and they said it should not be done and advised and that adding more D3 via sunlight or UV bulbs and adding calcium via limestone flour you will start getting metastatic calcification. Personally I now use very little Nutrobal, only 2-3 times a week and prefer to use limestone flour and a good quality UVB lighting system for the vitamin D3.

Darren