Coco coir for tortoise bedding is the outside of a coconut, but some parts are ground up and some are left as strings. It is very good, like moss, for keeping the humidity level high, like that.
I used Eco Earth, which can be bought at any Petco or Petsmart. I used it for a long time.
Some people might not be able to use the coconut coir because it isn’t being re-hydrated or kept hydrated while it is being used. The bricks of coir start out as this little brick. Then you add a liter of water, and BOOM, you have a bucket full of dirt.
Coconut coir shrivels back up when it dries out, so it needs to be kept moist to stay at the right size. I think that if the coir was too dry and a small tort ate it, it could become like the pigeons eating rice at a wedding if they ate it. I also think that any substrate that is so small that it moves around with the tort is bad (coconut coir, fine sand, dry clay).
I think it’s best to mix these materials with other things to make it a safer place to live. People I know use a 50/50 mix of coir and play sand without any problems at all.
What if My Tortoise accidentally consumes them?
A little should not be a big deal. Problems seem to arise when people use a lot of food and drink. Not myself, but I’ve seen a lot of this happen in other people’s collections and when breeders got animals back that were said to be hard to grow. Some people who have died have had necropsies that show that their GI tracts were full of coir. They were kind enough to share this information with me.
To make things easier for my young animals, a few years ago I started putting more soil in the substrate mix for their cages.
ALSO SEE: Can Tortoises eat Coriander Leaves?
Is Coco Coir good for Tortoises?
I use coir, which is like sawdust, to make my hair look good. There are no strings or chunks. There might not be a perfect surface. Most likely, something like this has or could have happened with most of the different types of materials out there.
Things like this will happen unless you have a fully planted ground covers, such as grass or a ground cover that is as close to the grass as possible. I would also say that things like this happen in the wild, too.
The bad news is that not every tortoise will be able to live, whether it’s in captivity or out in the wild. So, we can try to use as many good products as possible, give as much care as possible, then hope for the best! It’s bad that we’re going to lose some, but that’s just the way things are and it’s going to happen. I will use coir always. When I only have one leopard, that doesn’t bother me at all, though.