I'm having quite a challenging time , trying to , cooling down one of my female Panthers.

She has layed 3 clutches on 2 matings, all in succession. You can pretty much set a clock by her timing . Approximately 30 days gravid, then lays eggs , then becomes receptive and gravid 30 days later . This cycle has repeated twice as I had expected and I let her go once more on retained sperm.

As the 4th cycle should have begun, I cooled temps, reduced daylight hours and reduced feeding and supplementation, to no avail. She produced a 4th clutch and then a 5th . Of course this is destressing for 2 reasons.

First , of course , she is burning out with each clutch produced. I had intended to do 3 successive clutches and then cool for a few months .

Second, the 4th and 5th clutches are most likely to be seriously reduced fertility rates. Almost wasteful considering the price the female pays to produce the eggs anyway.

So,now I am faced with this again. This is the 3rd female Ive had over the past 5 years that will not take a break. I have had many others that have, so I'm reluctant to fault my husbandry , as it has worked for the majority of other females.

Do any of the members , here, have similar experiences and could you please share...thanks.

i do not have much experience in this area, but you should PM kinyonga i heard her say in a previous post she has stopped all egg production in general with her girls. she would be the one to talk to.

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Sunshine Chameleons
SunshineChameleons.com

no excuse me i was wrong she did it with veileds. i copied her post here ya go.

Through diet (and slight temperature decreases) I have found that I can stop the veiled chameleons from laying any eggs. These females usually live to be over 6 years of age...some even live to be over 7. (I have two right now...one will be 7 in three months and the other is 4+ and neither has laid an egg.) If I decide to breed them, I alter the diet and temperature and mate them and they will lay fertile eggs (up to a point...old age seems to make them infertile eventually). The clutches are always around the 2 dozen mark.

With panther chameleons, I can not stop the egg production but I seem to be able to keep the clutch size low (20 or so).

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Sunshine Chameleons
SunshineChameleons.com

It might be more a function of the indidvdual females drive to reproduce than any control factor with some of the Panthers.. Ive had the same problem with Fischer Multis.

As is quoted above, I can't stop the panthers from producing...I only seem to be able to control the clutch size.

What I do is this....once the female has laid her clutch, I feed and water her well for a couple of days until she has had a chance to recover from laying the eggs. I then cut the temperature down (just a couple of centigrade degrees) and cut down on the number of insects I feed her. I don't want to starve her...just keep her from overeating. This seems to keep the size of the clutch down. Once I know she is working on the next batch of eggs, I feed her more again so that she gets all the nutrients that she needs for the eggs.

Over the years mine have all seemed to be the type that produced and produced...but they seem/seemed to live longer than average lives anyway keeping them the way I do.

Thank you Kinyonga...I'll try that regimen.

I'm also curious????

On average , how many clutches can a Panther female produce? My experience has been between 6 and 9 clutches.