Can You Overfeed a Turtle? (with Pictures and Video)

Does your turtle always seem to want more food, and it will never stop eating? Most likely the answer is yes, as turtles are opportunistic feeders, which means that they will eat as much food as they will get. Unfortunately, this behavior can easily lead to overfeeding which is one of the most common problems among pet turtles.

Turtles can be easily overfed, which can result in serious health problems like obesity and pyramiding. Since turtles are opportunistic feeders this is one of the most common problems for pet turtles.

Overfeeding is a serious problem, but fortunately, it’s easy to remediate. But before adjusting the diet of your turtle, first, you have to look for signs of overfeeding.

Visual Signs of Overfeeding

There are two things that will happen if you overfeed your turtle. The first thing that will happen is that your turtle will get fat, which won’t only make your turtle look chubby, but will also damage some internal organs. And the second thing is that its shell will develop improperly.

Let’s start with obesity.

Obesity

Turtles don’t have that much skin exposed, the only parts covered with skin are the limbs, neck, head, and tail. So those are the parts where the excess fat will gather.

In the picture above you can see how the skin on the neck is basically hanging due to the excess fat. So if you notice that there is a fat buildup near the neck, this is a sign of overfeeding.

The next palace to look for fat is the limbs. When turtles retract their limbs in the shell, there should be nothing left on the outside, but if you notice something similar to this you are defiantly dealing with an obese turtle:

Another place fat tends to appear is the base of the tail, but here it’s harder to spot compared to the other places.

The pictures that I used are taken from a video posted by a veterinarian. If you want to take a better look here is the video, but I warn you some of the images are extremely unpleasant to look at.

Overall you should remember that turtles shouldn’t have any fat at all, as they are generally fit creatures.

Pyramiding

Pyramiding is an extremely bad thing, as it’s irreversible.

Pyramiding referees to the improper development of the shell due to excess proteins( so basically food)

Here is how a normal shell should look like:

And here is how a shell with pyramiding looks like:

Or in extreme cases like this:

How pyramiding manifests depends from turtle species to turtle species, so it can look different. But regardless of how it looks, it’s never a good thing, and it’s always irreversible.

Pyramiding can be stopped by changing the diet of the turtle, but it can never be reversed.

The good thing about pyramiding is that it has to be very advanced in order to affect the health of the turtle. So if it’s stopped as soon as it starts to develop it won’t affect the turtle. But be careful if the turtle will be overfed again the pyramiding process will continue from where it stopped last time.

How to Feed Your Turtle the Right Amount of Food

The simplest and most efficient way of feeding any turtle is the size of the head method.

This method says that you should feed your turtle the amount of food that it would take to fill its head.

So, to put this method into practice look for a small container, like a measuring spoon, medicine cup, shot glass, anything that is that has the same size as the head of your turtle. Fill that recipient with food and give it to your turtle. And that’s all.

If you would like to know how a feeding schedule should look like, and how often you should feed your turtle check out this article: How Often and How Much Do Red Eared Sliders Eat? + Schedule. While the article is about Red Eared Sliders, the same principles apply to any turtle.

How to Make Your Turtle Fit Again

If your turtle is starting to get fat you can easily rectify this by giving it a proper diet. But as we all know losing weight isn’t that easily achieved just by eating the right things, you also need to exercise.

Since you can’t take your turtle out with you jogging, you will need them to provide enough space to exercise. This means that they need to have a properly sized tank. As a rule of thumb, turtles need to have 10 gallons of water for every inch of the shell that they’ve got.

If you give it enough space, and a proper diet, your turtle should get back in shape in a few weeks or months, depending on how to overfeed they were.

But if your turtle is extremely obese, like in the pictures from the start of the article I would recommend you to go to a veterinarian. Obesity can affect their internal organs, which might need some treatment.

Final Thoughts

Turtle obesity shouldn’t be taken lightly, as it can lead to grave consequences.

But while this is a common problem, most cases are not too bad. A little extra fat won’t affect the turtle immediately, and can easily be corrected.

Serious problems arise only when turtles end up looking like the one in the pictures from the start.

The best way to make sure that you don’t overfeed your turtle is to use the size of the head feeding method and to provide it with enough space to exercise.

I hope this article answers all of your questions, but if you still have unanswered questions you can leave them in the comment section below and I will answer them as soon as possible.