Turtle food: are hard boiled eggs good for turtles?

Question

for a cheap but not staple food, can you buy eggs (bcz they're cheap) and hard boil them for turtles. they'd be ideal on the wallet because they're so cheap but so big that they'd feed and adolecent turtle for a day. they can have the calcium from the shell (i read that one way to get it into they're diet) and the yolk and whites would be solid and edible. is there an actual negitive side effect of turtles eating eggs.

FYI: the turtles in question are 1 red eared slider and one eastern painted

i do feed regualr food i wanted to know if this could be added to regular food without bad sie effects. some turtle can have certain things and i was wondering if eggs was on that list. they do get proper.... well everything.

DISMISS ABOVE BAD SPELLING WRONG WORDS:
i do feed regualr food. i wanted to know if this could be added to regular food without bad side effects. some turtle CAN'T have certain things (most water turtle can have fruit, too sweet) and i was wondering if eggs was on that list. they do get proper.... well everything.

would the egg whites being all nutrients be too rich for them?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AscQLt7il42hrOiXx2oZbzLM7BR.?qid=20070415190231AAFdhOi

this is where the question stemmed from. i have a picky turtle and chicken/tuna/turkey are expensive compared to pellets. i wanted to know if eggs could be a substitute for the chicken/tuna/turkey or if that's bad. i understand that it might not be natural but most pellets are flavored with chicken but i've never seen a turtle eat one.

Answer 1

NO NO NO. The eggs are fine, but not with the shells. I don't know what you read that suggested it was a good way to add calcium to the diet, but perhaps they meant ground eggshells. Fragmented eggshells are begging to injure all the tissues as they pass to the stomach, and may well cause impaction in the intestines (I have no experience with that, however). Your RES, at least, will probably prefer the whites to the yolks by far...they are higher protein, and turtles don't have a great attraction to fatty/unlean protein sources.

Answer 2

We generally do not feed pond turtles hard-boiled eggs. They just are not the right nutrient mix for the turtles, and are not a very natural food. Fatty and the wrong mix of nutrients.

Chicken egg shells are also not the best calcium source for aquatic turtles. Between being rather sharp, they have other problems (which I know I've seen recently, but cannot locate the references to!)

"So big they would feed an adolescent turtle for a day"- actually, an egg would be 3-5 days worth of food for a single medium-sized turtle. You may be overfeeding yours. A typical daily serving is only the size of the turtle's head.

If cost is the main issue, you can make your own turtle foods easily enough. There are a lot of ways to make it, but here is one version.

- Grind up
---- 2 parts turtle or trout chow
---- 1/2 part weight control dog or cat kibble
---- 1/2 part alfalfa pellets, tortoise pellets, or iguana pellets
- Mix in about 1/16th part each of calcium supplement and multi-vitamins
- Finely chop and add about
---- 3 parts catfish or other firm fish
---- 1 part dark leafy greens
---- 1/2 part yellow squash (optional)
- Mix into unflavored gelatin prepared per directions, but with about 2/3rds of the usual liquids.
- Add some cod liver oil, and red food coloring.
- Set up on a big cake pan about 1/2" thick or so. When set, slice into cubes. Freeze in Zip-Lock bags.

Answer 3

I've never heard anything about eggs being bad for turtles, though I would take the shells off first (for all the reasons given by the other answerers, plus the fact that I doubt your turtle would even eat the shell in the first place). If you're giving your critter a good pellet food, it should have enough calcium in it to satisfy his needs.

Answer 4

what did the petstore you got him from recomend? I would tink that eggshells cause impaction. Turtles are aquatic so they eat whats in the water. When I was young we fed ours pellets, freeze dryed krill*i think*, earthworms*not from outside*, and ect. Keep in mind that this was 12 years ago. But normally I would feed em pellet foods with the occational fish or 2.

Answer 5

There is no cheap way to care for them. What are you going to do when they need a tank the size of a kiddie pool. They can eat feeder fish, worms, bugs, reptomin, leafy greens(the darker the better), and some veggies. Do some research on line, I would never give mine eggs.

Answer 6

I occasionally give eggs to my turtles and tortoise's, but I would not recommend it as a standard diet. I have had only one who liked his boiled, added to mixed greens, (anyone order the tortoise salad?) When I give them eggs I scramble them in the microwave with a little Reptical mixed in. I use the microwave in order to cook them without using any fat. My box turtles love it.
I would not recommend using this for aquatic turtles as it will very quickly foul their water.

Answer 7

What????!!!!!! Your poor turtle's going choke on the shell. And like that dude said it's fatty! your turtle could die from being overweight and it will never fit inside that itty bitty teany weany yellow poka dot bikini that it always wanted!

Answer 8

it okay to feed the hard boiled eggs but don't feed him that regularly

Answer 9

Ask a vet whose specialty is reptiles.