Hi Megan and welcome to The Tortoise Table! And congratulations on your tortoise -- can you tell us what species it is? It's just that there are at least four or five different species that fall under the term 'Mediterranean' tortoises, and they do have slightly different care needs. And if you tell us the species we can send you a care sheet for it.
Regarding the complete set-up -- can you confirm that the enclosure is an open tortoise table-type set-up and not an enclosed glass and wood vivarium? This is really, really important as many pet shops try to sell new owners a vivarium and they are actually very bad environments for tortoises. Did your set-up include a good UVB light (this is also important). Just to avoid any problems if you want to tell us what you've ordered or give us a link, we can let you know if it will be suitable for your tortoise
Re the diet -- they don't need any exotic food at all (which I hope comes as good news)! The best diet for tortoises consists of suitable weeds, flowers and leaves of many plants that will be growing in your garden or in the wild (dandelions, plantain, sowthistle, campanula, pansies and many, many more). You should avoid most of the commercial food as much of it is far too high in protein (tortoises need a high fibre/low protein diet), although there are a few that are OK. You can use our website to filter our database (which contains over 1,000 plants) to find the ones that are best suited for your tortoise. Just go to our website
https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/ and then:
1. Go into the Plant Database.
2. Go into the Categories section and then into any of the Categories (for example, Wild Flowers).
3. Towards the top of the page you will see a dark green bar that says ‘Filter Results by Safety’, followed by a row of coloured boxes with ticks in them (Green, Amber-Green, Amber-Red, and Red). These are our ‘traffic light’ codings: Green for safe to feed; Amber-green for feed in moderation; Amber-red for feed sparingly; and Red for do not feed.
4. Remove the ticks from the Amber-Red and Red boxes (just click on a tick remove it), leaving only the Green and Amber-Green boxes ticked (or for the safest plants, leave only the Green box ticked).
5. Thereafter, as long as you are in the current session on our website, all of the Categories will only display plants that are safe for your tortoise to eat. If you exit the website and then return, you will have to do this again. And of course you can also filter on the Red coding to produce a list of plants that you should not feed, etc.
6. If you want to print off the new list that you have made, there is a print icon underneath the full menu that will enable you to do this. But please note that the list you are printing off is the shortened version of the plant entries, and you should always consult the full version of an entry to see all the details, more photos, and the icons that tell you which parts of the plant are edible.
That's a bit long-winded but it's actually very easy!
I'm sure you are going to provide a really excellent home for this tortoise, and please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any more questions or problems.
Warmest wishes,
Nina
