Every year, since around the mid 1950’s thousands of baby turtles have been purchased for pets every year. In the early days, because of the lack of quality turtle foods and the basic understanding of proper turtle care and cleanliness, many of these hatchling turtles (sadly) never made it into adulthood. Thankfully, those times are long gone now with the current flood of information on proper turtle care and the availability of higher quality turtle food products. Today being successful at keeping aquatic turtles a much easier target to hit.

Today we are much more accomplished in providing the right nutritional profile to assure our turtles stay in top health and condition, but how did we get to where we are today?  The answer is much more complex then you may think, buts it’s an interesting and fun history that has brought us to the advanced Turtle diets of today. Back in the old days, for me that’s the late 60’s when I was a kid, I would buy my turtle food (well, my mom would) at the neighborhood drug store’s pet department. Back then, Longlife (then owned by the Mattel toy company) was producing fish & turtle foods that consisted primarily of ant-eggs. They used to sell it in a small yellow tin box (I still have one). Hartz Mountain sold a turtle food consisting of ant eggs and dried flies. Wardley too, had a turtle food that was about the same basic grade.  Compared to today’s Aquatic Turtle diets, it was a very modest beginning to be sure.

Since those early years, the Reptile Category has grown into an important section of the U.S. Pet Industry and with that more and more research has gone into the development of more complete and advanced Aquatic Turtle foods.

Today’s foods are a mixed bag though, some brands, like TropicZone and ZooMed spending the time and effort to provide what has been proven to be nutritionally sound, while others just going for what’s easiest to produce and more colorful to market. But any way you look at it, we are still light-years away from ant-eggs. 

The progression of turtle foods has advanced through different forms over the years. In the beginning they were simple products with only one or two ingredients, usually ant eggs, flies, or dried shrimp. From there various pelletted and even flake foods were tried but didn’t fare well when added to the water. Finally extruded products that had taken hold in the dog and cat food product categories were gaining momentum and were moving into the Aquaculture industry. From there it was only a small jump to see extrusions move into other Pet food categories, including reptile nutrition. Today most all Aquatic turtle foods are some example of an extruded product.

So what is an extrusion exactly? In a paragraph, the procedure goes like this: Various food products are mixed and ground together, they are then liquefied and processed through an extruding machine. The extruding process takes the food mixture, heats it quickly under pressure with steam (partially cooking the ingredients in the process) and then mechanically pushes the cooked mash out through a die which determines the size and shape of the final product. Once the food material has exited the extruder in that form, it is left to dry and firm up. What does all this do? Well, first it allows you to determine what the final product will look like. Will it be round? square? or look like a cheese puff?  Will it be a big pellet like a dog kibble or a small pellet for fish feeding? A simple change of the extruding machines dies and cutter makes all these shapes and sizes possible.

The extrusion process also allows you exceptional control over the available nutrient content of the final product. For example: by rapidly heating the food mixture as it moves through the extruder, two primary improvements develop in the food mix. One is that the cooking process created by the heated steam begins to breakdown much of the complex proteins contained in the food mix, this leaves these proteins in a condition where they can be more easily assimilated. Starches also are affected in much the same way making them more usable as a nutritional source. And finally, because the food mix is heated rapidly and only for a short period of time, degradation of vitamins due to heat processing is kept to a minimum, so that more vitamins remain in the final product. In the end, you have a uniformed “nugget”, correctly sized, shaped, and formulated to address specific nutritional needs.

 

It’s easy to see why extrusions have moved to the forefrount of Aquatic Turtle Nutrition, with a few manufacturers leading the way. But just because its an extruded product doesent nescessarly make it a great food, its important to remember that the food produced by the extruder can only be as good as the foods core components. Always check the ingredient list to make sure your getting the best nutrition available for your turtles. But whatever diet you decide upon, its likely to be extruded. By providing a floating morsel, correctly sized, easily consumed, with a highly digestible nutrient profile, we are definitely light years away from ant eggs!

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