Sulcata Tortoise Diet: Feeding a Grass Eater

Grass and hay, available constantly, making up the great bulk of the diet. Weeds and edible flowers alongside. Almost no vegetables, almost no fruit, and no animal protein whatever.

If you have arrived here after reading general tortoise advice, put it aside. The African spurred tortoise, Centrochelys sulcata, is a grazing animal from the Sahel, and feeding it like a Mediterranean tortoise is one of the more damaging mistakes in the hobby.

Older care sheets list this species as Geochelone sulcata. It was reclassified in 2008, so both names refer to the same tortoise.

How Sulcata diets differ from Testudo

The difference is not a matter of degree. It reverses several answers.

The Tortoise Trust puts mixed grasses and meadow hays at roughly 70 to 75% of the total diet for this species. For a Hermann’s or Horsfield’s tortoise, grass is a minor food at best, poorly handled because of its silica content.

Sulcatas also graze rather than eat meals. A wild one spends hours a day working through low-quality vegetation, which is a completely different pattern from a Testudo taking a short feed and retreating. The captive equivalent is constant access to hay rather than a bowl put down each morning.

And they get very large. This is the third largest tortoise species in the world, capable of exceeding 30 inches and 45kg, with a lifespan measured in decades. Anyone weighing up whether to keep one should be honest about that before the feeding question arises, because a British household cannot casually accommodate an animal of that size that also needs warmth for most of the year.

Grass and hay

This is the foundation, and it should never run out.

Grazing grasses: ordinary untreated lawn grass is genuinely good food and among the cheapest available. Couch grass, barley grass and wheat grass all sit in the regular band of our records for this group.

Grass hays: timothy, meadow hay, orchard grass and oat hay are the standard recommendations. Mixing two or three keeps a selective feeder interested and evens out the nutrition.

Alfalfa is disputed and we would avoid it as a staple. Veterinary sources warn against feeding predominantly alfalfa hay because its protein and oxalate content is linked to bladder stone formation and kidney damage. Some experienced keepers disagree and use it successfully. Given that renal problems are a leading cause of death in captive tortoises, the cautious position seems the right one, and grass hays do the job without the argument.

Hay is not a winter substitute for this species. It is normal food all year.

Suitable leafy plants

Weeds and flowers make up the remainder alongside grass.

Good regular additions: plantain, sow thistle, mallow, hawkbit, bristly oxtongue, nipplewort, hibiscus, viola and pansy, violet, calendula, campanula. Prickly pear pads, spineless Opuntia, are also a regular food for grazing species and worth growing if you can.

In rotation: dandelion, clover, chickweed, nettle, bramble and blackberry leaves. From a shop, kale, spring greens, turnip greens, collard greens, watercress and chicory.

Sparingly: courgette, squash, pumpkin, bell pepper, carrot.

Fruit is not part of the natural diet of a Sahel grazer and sits in the sparingly band for this group, the same as for Mediterranean tortoises. See can tortoises eat fruit.

Check anything else with the food checker, selecting a grazing species so the verdicts reflect this group rather than a Testudo.

Foods to avoid

Dog and cat food, meat, mealworms, boiled egg, bread and dairy. Peas, beans and pulses. Tomato, spinach, rhubarb, celery and parsley. Cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. Potato, sweetcorn, onion, garlic and avocado.

Protein is the central danger for a species this size. Excess protein drives growth faster than the skeleton can support and burdens the kidneys, and in an animal that will spend fifty years carrying the result, that matters more rather than less.

Low-fibre, high-water salad is the other common failure. It fills a Sulcata up without doing any of the work grass does, and a tortoise filling up on lettuce is one not eating hay.

The full list with reasoning is at tortoise foods to avoid.

Juvenile considerations

Young Sulcatas cannot simply be fed the adult diet in smaller portions.

Their jaws are not yet strong enough for coarse hay, so they need softer material: fresh grass rather than dry stalks, softer second or third cutting hay, and a wider proportion of leafy weeds and greens while they grow into the tough stuff.

Hydration matters more in juveniles than most keepers expect from a species associated with desert. Young Sulcatas dehydrate readily. Regular soaking in shallow lukewarm water is standard practice, alongside water available at all times. See water and hydration.

Growth rate needs watching throughout. Rapid growth on a rich, soft diet is the classic route to pyramiding and metabolic bone disease, and the research on what causes pyramiding is less settled than either side of the argument claims. The tortoise diet page sets out what the evidence actually supports.

More on early feeding in baby tortoise food.

Commercial grassland foods

Some manufacturers produce low-starch, high-fibre products aimed specifically at grazing and arid-zone species rather than at tortoises generally. Those are a different proposition from a standard tortoise pellet, and the distinction is worth checking on the label.

Veterinary guidance is that commercial diets should not be used exclusively, and can reasonably form a small part of the intake alongside grass, hay and fresh plants. The Tortoise Trust goes further and recommends avoiding mass-market pellets altogether, on the grounds that fine particles and short fibres digest too quickly and drive exactly the growth rates this species does not need. Both positions are set out in our guide to tortoise pellets.

Whatever you use, it supplements grazing rather than replacing it. See also dried tortoise food.

Sourcing food in the UK

Britain presents a specific problem for this species, and most care guides written elsewhere ignore it.

An American keeper can leave a Sulcata grazing outdoors for much of the year on Bermuda grass. A British keeper cannot. Outdoor grazing is realistic from roughly late spring to early autumn, and for the rest of the year the diet comes from hay and whatever greens you can supply. That makes hay the central purchase rather than an occasional one.

Where to buy: the rabbit and horse trade, not the reptile aisle. Timothy and meadow hay sold for small mammals or horses is the same product, usually better quality and considerably cheaper by weight. Buy in bulk and store it dry.

Growing grazing: an untreated lawn is a perfectly good Sulcata pasture. Never use weed and feed, lawn treatments, herbicide or slug pellets anywhere the tortoise has access. If you overseed, ordinary meadow and lawn mixtures are fine, and the grow your own page covers planting an edible run.

Winter greens: the same supermarket options everyone else falls back on, kept in rotation and used alongside hay rather than instead of it. See winter feeding.

One point that follows from the British climate. Digestion in tortoises depends on body temperature, and a cold Sulcata cannot process the coarse fibre it depends on. Feeding is only half the picture: if the animal is not warm enough to ferment its food, the diet does not work regardless of how good the hay is.

For hay selection in more detail, see grass and hay for tortoises. The other grazing species is covered in leopard tortoise diet, and tortoise diets by species explains the wider groupings.

Guidance here draws on the Tortoise Trust, published veterinary sources and conservation organisations, checked as described in our sources and review policy. Where sources disagree, as they do on alfalfa, we say so. This is husbandry information rather than clinical advice, as our veterinary disclaimer explains.

Last reviewed: September 2026.