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Dietary Problems

Dr. Scott's basic message was to provide foods that have ratios of calcium to phosphorus that are higher than 2 to 1, and, stay away from things with more phosphorus than calcium. If you feed worms to your turtles, prefeed the worms with a low quality dog food (such as WalMart's Old Roy). Premium dog foods have too much Vitamin D and other minerals, and too little calcium. Instead of dog food, you can give the worms a commercial super prefeed, available at reptile-oriented pet stores.

Dr. Scott always likes to prevent problems before they develop. Hyper- or hypocalcemia and kidney problems can be detected by having blood work done on your pets. Every other year is frequent enough to detect problems before they become irreversible.



Bob Smither 2002-10-29