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So I've concocted a food recipe for my turtle, and I want to make sure I have not missed or over added anything, below is a list of the constituents:

  • raw chicken
  • turtle sticks
  • some paprika
  • 5 peas
  • 3 long slices of carrot
  • 2 corn
  • 1 small bean pod
  • 1 egg yolk as a binder

I didn't find gelatin or agar so I stuck to egg yolk as a binder.

I put them in a blender and mixed them well, then put them in a zip lock bag and into the freezer. Are there any important factors I've missed? And did I add anything I typically shouldn't?

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  • in first step you should provide information about the species of your turtle and the age. Some kinds are more carnivores, some more herbivores and some change the favourite food between childhood and grown up.
    – Allerleirauh
    Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 18:43

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I would probably boil the chicken for a couple reasons:

  1. In the off-chance there are parasites, cooking it should kill them.

  2. Raw chicken can carry Salmonella. I'm honestly not sure how much of a risk Salmonella poisoning is to turtles, but since they can carry Salmonella as well, you could increase the number of bacteria on your turtle and in the tank. Which also might not be too much of a problem provided you regularly wash your hand after you handle your turtle or touch the tank water. Here's the CDC article on chicken and Salmonella poisoning) for reference.

  3. You would be able to boil off most of the fat, meaning less fat that your turtle eats.

Other than that, if you're finding that the food clouds up your water a bit, that might be the egg yolk breaking up. In that case you could possible try using the egg white as the binding material instead. The egg white doesn't have as much protein as the yolk, but I don't think it will matter since you're also including chicken. There's also an alternative to gelatin that's made from seaweed called agar that might be worth looking out for.

You could also use the egg shells, ground up to a powder, to give a bit of a calcium boost to the food.

Other than that, I'd say it looks like you have a pretty good balance going of fresh and commercial food.

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  • Thanks, ive thought of the chicken and actually boiled them in another combination. The egg yolk was clouding the water so I added flour then baked for a few minutes on both sides, then cut it into pellet size pieces.Thisseems to way more effective and clean, though my turtle seems to be stubborn against them and against almost anything I offer( I recently got it a new enclosure, i guess that might be a reason as its probably still settling in)
    – Mozein
    Commented Aug 4, 2014 at 20:26

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