JBL Agivert Tortoise Food Sticks

JBL Agivert Tortoise Food Sticks is JBL's plant-based stick food for herbivorous land tortoises.

Key Features

• Purely plant based: Made from plant raw materials only, with no animal protein, which is what a herbivorous tortoise is actually built to digest.
• High fibre, low protein, and that is the point: Too much protein is the single biggest dietary mistake in tortoise keeping. It pushes growth faster than the shell can form evenly, which gives the raised, lumpy scutes called pyramiding, and over years it damages the kidneys. A high fibre, low protein food works the way browse does.
• Selected herbs and plants: JBL build in a mix of herbs and plants rather than a single base, which gives a broader range of trace nutrients than one plant would.
• Vitamin complex with vitamin C: Covers the dietary side of growth and immune function. The lighting side is just as important, and is covered further down this page.

Feeding A Land Tortoise

• Moisten it before feeding unless the pack tells you otherwise. Tortoises take a lot of their water from their food, and a diet of dry pellets works against that.
• JBL list this as a main food. In practice most experienced keepers use a dried food alongside fresh weeds and greens, because browse is what a tortoise eats in the wild and it provides the bulk and the moisture.
• Good fresh additions are dandelion, plantain, clover, mallow and other broadleaf weeds. Keep lettuce, fruit and anything from the supermarket salad aisle to a minimum.
• Feed daily, in a quantity the animal clears in one sitting, and take away what is left so it does not sour.
• Fresh water always available in a shallow dish the tortoise can get into and out of, plus a regular shallow bath, which is how most tortoises actually drink.

Shell Health Needs More Than Food

• A turtle or tortoise cannot use the calcium in its food without vitamin D3, and it makes D3 from UVB light. No food on its own prevents a soft or deformed shell.
• That means a UVB lamp over the basking area, changed on the schedule its maker gives. A UVB tube stops producing useful UVB long before it stops producing visible light, so a lamp that still looks fine can be doing nothing.
• It also means a basking spot warm enough to digest at. A reptile kept too cool does not absorb what it eats, however good the food is.
• Offer a separate calcium source as well, such as a cuttlebone or a calcium block left in the enclosure for the animal to use when it wants it.
• A soft shell, a lumpy or pyramided shell, or an animal that cannot lift itself to bask are reasons to see a reptile vet rather than to change the food.

Which JBL Reptile Food For Which Animal

• Agil is for aquatic turtles and terrapins, the sliders, cooters and map turtles that live in water and haul out to bask. Floating sticks built on animal protein.
• Agivert is for herbivorous land tortoises, such as Hermann's, spur-thighed and Horsfield's. Purely plant based, high in fibre and deliberately low in protein.
• Gammarus is a treat for aquatic turtles rather than a diet, fed a few pieces at a time.
• The two main foods are not interchangeable. A high protein stick fed to a land tortoise causes exactly the shell and kidney damage a tortoise diet is designed to avoid, and a plant based food will not meet the needs of a young aquatic turtle.

Storing It

• JBL give three years unopened and around three months once the tub has been opened, because the vitamins degrade after that.
• Buy the size you will get through within three months of opening rather than the size that looks cheapest per litre.
• Keep it sealed, cool, dry and out of sunlight. Never in a damp room.
• Scoop with a dry spoon rather than a wet hand. Moisture getting into the tub is what starts mould.

Good To Know

• For herbivorous land tortoises. Do not feed it to an aquatic turtle as a staple, which needs the animal protein in Agil instead.
• Sold in 250 ml and 1 litre tubs. JBL size the range for animals of about 10 to 50 cm.
• A tortoise that stops eating is telling you something about its temperature, its lighting or its health rather than about the food. Check the enclosure before changing the diet.
• Keep it away from children and pets, and wash your hands after handling reptile food and after handling the animal.