The Life Staging of Turtle Diets - Turtle Diets of the Future are Here

The Life Staging of Turtle Diets – Turtle Diets of the Future are Here

So what exactly is “Life Staging” you might ask? If you listen to advertising text from countless Animal Nutrition companies you’ll hear the name, or at least the premise. Though you might not catch the phrase “life staging”, you’re already very familiar with the concept. Every time you buy a bag of “puppy” food, or “adult” maintenance dog food, or “senior” Cat food, you’re buying a life-staged formulated diet. Life staging is the process of determining an animal’s landmark growth & development stages, and providing what dietary adjustments be incorporated into their diet to support and provide for those “stages” of the animal’s development. This certainly makes good sense since most all animals go through a varied growth process to get from a newly born (or hatched) baby up into its primary goal – reproductive age. And then of course, hopefully into older age.

Sometimes life staging goes beyond just determining pivotal growth and development stages but also other areas directly related to the diet, such as activity level (as in working dog or hunting dog foods), breeding or lactating (horse and cattle foods) or even addressing specific medical conditions that are directly affected by dietary intake, such as foods that support urinary track health in felines and older dogs. The major dog and cat food companies are prime examples of producers of staged diets. Hill’s Science Diet dog/cat foods have over 40 different staged food products relating to age, health, and activity level of the animal. Iams Pet Food, Nature’s Recipe, Nutro, Pedigree, all provide Staged diets. Purina, the world’s largest dog food manufacturer with over 200 different brands of dogfood, has dozens of Staged variations.

These leading players in the pet food game know that life staging works well to promote the animal’s health and growth through significant life cycle changes. Unfortunately, it’s safe to say that most Reptile food manufactures have not caught up with this advance thinking in regard to providing properly staged diets. In Aquatic Turtle Foods, some basic staging has presented itself in a limited “growth-maintenance” format, but not much is available in a true comprehensive “Hatchling through adulthood” staged dietary program, incorporating all 5 major landmark growth cycles of aquatic turtles and addressing each one individually.

The one exception to this is TropicZone’s Staged Diets for Aquatic Turtles. TropicZone produces 5 complete dietary platforms for each 5 stages of development in aquatic turtles, from the hatchling stage through baby, juvenile, sub-adult, and full adult stage turtles. Dietary and/or pellet size adjustments are made throughout each of the 5 stages of the diet, such as protien sources, protien levels, fat levels, etc. Even the pellet sizes are adjusted to perfectly match the growth cycle at each stage of the turtle’s development. In addition to their 5 Stage Dietary Platform for Aquatic Turtles, TropicZone also address the dietary needs of turtles in active situations or breeding conditions by providing a High Performance version of their diets. Where most turtle food manufactures produce a minimal scattering of various turtle food products, TropiZone produces over 18 different turtle foods specifically staged for the proper growth and development of aquatic and terrestrial turtles. Clearly, no other turtle food manufacturer has embraced the advanced philosophy of Life-Staged Dietary programs as completely as TropicZone has.