other sources of Vitamin A

I keep reading how some kind of supplementation with preformed Vitamin A is necessary for chameleons.

Given I have never in all my years of successfull chameleon keeping provided preformed vitamin A, I am wondering how my chameleons stay healthy. I use a vitamin supplement (with beta carotene) every other week or so. No other vitamin supplements are used.

So, setting aside the possibility that they dont need preformed vitamin A..... Is it that perhaps one of my feeders coverts beta carotene into retinol? which is then injested by the chameleon?

all year round I use crickets (store bought and gutloaded on the typical things such as dandelion, yam, carrot, bee pollen, etc);
all year round there are superworms (home grown, eating bran, oatmeal, and the typical wet gutload things like dandelion, carrot, squash, orange);
several times a year i buy butterworms (storebought);
mostly in summer, but a few throughout the year, they get stick insects (eating primarily blackberry leaves);
mostly in summer, but a few throughout the year, they get isopods (eating whatever scraps are available, plus dead crickets, leaves, shed cham skin and such, sometimes dog food - but I switch them to a normal gutload for at least 24 hours before feeding off);
just a few throughout the year (Ive not had these all that long, a fairly recent addition to the menu) M Hissing roaches (home grown, same typical gutload as crickets get);
in the last few months I've added the occasional turkish roach (home grown, same typical gutload as crickets get);
a couple times a year i buy silkworms (usually fed on chow in the winter, leaves in summer);
moths (wild caught, inseason);
grasshoppers (wild caught, in summer only);
mealworms (not very often, same food as supers get)
cabbage loppers (wild caught, summer)

Why dont my chameleons have eye issues?

edit: mealworms sometimes used to get fish food flakes, not a lot, not often and I stopped doing this quite awhile ago (I no longer have fish).

sandrachameleon said:

I use a vitamin supplement (with beta carotene)

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there ya go. tons of scientists are saying beta carotene can not be broken down into vitamin A due to the lack of a specific enzyme. just because we can do this doesn't mean everything can. I have actually read that older Chameleons should be feed pinkies, or tiny fuzzies. since in the wild they will eat form time to time anoles, and small birds. when i read this i was surprised, but thought it was pretty cool at the same time. They suggested feeding the beta carotene to your feeders so that they would break it down to vitamin A, and your guy would eat them getting the Straight Vitamin A.

I spent a good amount of time today looking this up, and found it very interesting, and rather fascinating. I hope to get some hard literature on this
soon!

also since carrots have a good amount of beta carotene in them they said you could use these for your feeders. which im going to start doing now

Docility said:

there ya go. tons of scientists are saying beta carotene can not be broken down into vitamin A due to the lack of a specific enzyme. just because we can do this doesn't mean everything can. I have actually read that older Chameleons should be feed pinkies, or tiny fuzzies. since in the wild they will eat form time to time anoles, and small birds. when i read this i was surprised, but thought it was pretty cool at the same time. They suggested feeding the beta carotene to your feeders so that they would break it down to vitamin A, and your guy would eat them getting the Straight Vitamin A.

I spent a good amount of time today looking this up, and found it very interesting, and rather fascinating. I hope to get some hard literature on this
soon!

also since carrots have a good amount of beta carotene in them they said you could use these for your feeders. which im going to start doing now

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There is definately beta carotene getting to my chameleons, both from the every other month supplement and from the carrots and dandelion etc in the guts of the crickets and other feeders. Ive never offered a pinkie or any other non-insect prey (though I'm sure they could occassionally get small birds and lizards in the wild).

So if chameleons supposedly do not convert beta carotene into preformed vitamin a, how is it they are still healthy? Do the feeders convert it? Which ones? They dont have livers, at least I dont think they do....actually, Im not sure they need livers, maybe its the upper intestinal tract that coverts bc to a, which is then stored in fat. The larva are fat. Could they be the source?
but if some of those feeders do covert bc into a, why would anyone who gutloads their insects ever need to directly gived their chameleon preformed vitamin a.

there are several knowledgable people on this forum who have strongly stated preformed vitamin A is necessary. But my experience has shown me otherwise. I'm trying to find the missing link.

sandrachameleon said:

There is definately beta carotene getting to my chameleons, both from the every other month supplement and from the carrots and dandelion etc in the guts of the crickets and other feeders. Ive never offered a pinkie or any other non-insect prey (though I'm sure they could occassionally get small birds and lizards in the wild).

So if chameleons supposedly do not convert beta carotene into preformed vitamin a, how is it they are still healthy? Do the feeders convert it? Which ones? They dont have livers, at least I dont think they do....actually, Im not sure they need livers, maybe its the upper intestinal tract that coverts bc to a, which is then stored in fat. The larva are fat. Could they be the source?
but if some of those feeders do covert bc into a, why would anyone who gutloads their insects ever need to directly gived their chameleon preformed vitamin a.

there are several knowledgable people on this forum who have strongly stated preformed vitamin A is necessary. But my experience has shown me otherwise. I'm trying to find the missing link.

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They can get Vitamin A from other sources. Im not sure what else can be broken down to Vitamin A, but there are multiple things in supplements. Some things have it naturally in their body structure ECT. You know they never specified what ones could break it down, but im going to try it with crickets, and supers.

I can hopefully find out the breakdown of the nutrients from insects as well as find out what offers vitamin A naturally. Ill do some looking, and see if i can find a common idea, but i know im going to be hitting the Vet Section of the library at Marshall when it opens up after break, and if not i may "bug" some of the professors. (lol sorry for the pun just couldn't resist) =P

I know that snails can convert it, as well as slugs. I think it may be your isopods, being that they are fed dog food and other things with preformed A in it. They would retain the preformed A (since it isn't fat soluble like beta carotene is (I think I got that detail right)) so would still have it even after being fed a different diet prior to feeding. The wild caught insects that you get will also probably have some. Do you feed your supers anything meaty like freshly dead crickets? That may be part of it as well.

just as i thought i cant get a real finite answer from the web though the most common thing noted was studies directed towards the study of Vitamin A in the front part of bugs heads, and in their eyes.

so they get some Vitamin A from that, but we look at what they eat in the wild. a bunch of bugs, and i read the study of them eating small rodents/lizards/birds to get some sort of nutritional value, and that they would prefer bugs? since it indicated they only did this rarely. Bugs have organs, or at least respective groups of tissues that work as a normal organ would so there for all those parts should contain separate nutritional values. in theory.

they eat a lot of flying insects in the wild. which conincidently have big heads/eyes. so if you could get fruit flies maybe they could help suffice the need?

though i cant say thats for certain with out a nutritional break down of the animal

anyone have a mass spectrometer to run blended bugs through lol?

Many wild bugs are going to be eating decaying matter such as carrion. This will be one source of vitamin A. I don't have a reference on hand, but have read that various molluscs and gastropods have a higher preformed A content than other creepy crawlies and that snails and slugs are commonly found in the stomachs of wild chams. I know that these types of arthropods will eat anything that sits still long enough.

Also, blood drinking and biting insects such as mosquitoes and flies could also be a source.

If i have to do an educated guess, your wild caught feeders will most likely be the reason why.
and Kenya summarized it nicely.

Sandrachameleon is still saying that her chameleons are not fed anything that could be containing preformed vitamin A...and yet her chameleons are healthy. I know you said isopods can convert beta carotene but I have had the same question for years and I don't use isopods.

The only possibility of my chameleons getting any preformed vitamin A whatsoever is if the insects carry it either from eating something before they come to me that they retain it from (in spite of me feeding them for several days before using them to feed my critters)...because I give them none...no animal products or foods...just greens and veggies.

I would also like someone to explain to me what purpose the beta carotene in the eggs serves....
"Chameleon yolks contained considerably higher levels of carotenoids than levels previously reported from two viviparous lizard species, and -carotene concentrations were of the same magnitude as reported in grazing tortoises."
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/95016303/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Then there are articles like this...
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/104519742/abstract
"For adult crickets and cricket nymphs, body Ca and vitamin A concentrations increased in a linear fashion with increasing levels of dietary Ca or vitamin A. Ca concentrations of silkworms also increased in a linear fashion with increasing levels of dietary Ca. For mealworms, body Ca and vitamin A concentrations increased in a nonlinear fashion with increasing levels of dietary Ca or vitamin A."

There is indeed a need for someone to do a further study on Beta carotene and retynol controversies on chameleon...

Thank you for all your replies.

I was leaning towards the isopods myself. Even though I dont give them very much dog kibble or egg, and even though I gutload them on just veggies for at least a day, usually several days, before feeding off - its true that they could be retaining some trace amounts in their fat.
I dont offer isopods very much, cuz I worry about their digestability. So it would sure be a very very small amount being transferred along.

Which suggests to me that chameleons dont need much (if any) preformed vitamin A.

I find kinyonga's response of great interest, given that her chameleons do not get isopods.
Lynda, do your chameleons get any wild caught bugs? Or do you gutload your crickets with pre-formed vitamin a containing matter?

Does anyone know what the commercial cricket breeders feed their crickets?

Which suggests to me that chameleons dont need much (if any) preformed vitamin A.

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I do not see anything in your experience that would support the assumption that they may not need any pre-formed A. Without being sure if your chameleon has no source of pre-formed A in its diet, and then eliminating that source to evaluate the effects, how can you then suggest that it does not need any ? Many studies, dating back to those done by Ferguson, Stahl, et al, back in the 90's strongly suggest that at least some species of chameleons, with pardalis most studied, need pre-formed vitamin A. This was the conclusion of the studies, not an assumption by the reader. We have much experience here where pre-formed A was excluded from the diet, beta-carotene was plentiful, and large numbers of chameleons developed symptoms of Vitamin A deficiency, which were then rectified by the addition of pre-formed A to the diet. We are not the only ones to have come to this conclusion based on a statistically significant sample size, not some hodge-podge guess work. There are many members of this forum who have also diagnosed vitamin A deficiency in their animals, added pre-formed A to the diet, and seen the symptoms disappear.

Your system is working, and as they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". But to extrapolate that your chameleons, or any chameleons, do not need pre-formed A is not supported by your observatiopns, and certainly not by a large body of evidence developed over the last decade plus.

Does anyone know what the commercial cricket breeders feed their crickets?

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The cheapest stuff they can. Usually, its what is left over in the mills, bagged and sold as cricket or worm food. Its fine for crickets, but would not serve well as a gut-load.

Just dust with herpvit and you'll be fine. A lot of people here worry way too much.

lampshade said:

Just dust with herpvit and you'll be fine. A lot of people here worry way too much.

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Um, not true. Herptivite has beta carotene which chameleons supposedly cannot synthesize and convert into retinol (preformed A). That is the entire point of this post. As for "worrying too much", I think many keepers don't pay enough attention to their chams and husbandry practices. It isn't worrying, it is science, thought, and cultivating understanding of what these animals need to not just survive, but thrive in captivity.

My personal experience shows that adding the very small occasional amount of preformed to my cham's diets is vital. I have had several rescue chams, mostly veileds, that had obvious deficiency in vitamin A. They could not shoot their food properly or focus their eyes and seemed to have perpetual bad aim. I have also read that a black, hard tail tip is characteristic of the deficiency and one of the chams that I rescued has this as well. After some treatment with small amounts of preformed vitamin A, the health of these chams started improving and has been fine since.

The key is moderation (and that is true for a lot of things in life- you can always add more, but you can't take any away)

The funny thing is Rep-Cal is proud to have no vitamin A. From their site:

"HERPTIVITE is the first reptile vitamin without Vitamin A. Instead we use Beta Carotene which is an anti-oxidant that is converted into Vitamin A in a regulated way, so there is no threat of Vitamin A toxicity."

I wonder if THEY did any research on reptiles' ability to convert Beta Carotene. You'd think the exotic reptile hobby was popular (read: profitable) enough these days to warrant some studies into this hotly debated topic and finally give us a definitive answer.

I have personally experienced Beta Carotene supplements and Beta Carotene gut-loading be insufficient for a chameleon's needs, and preformed Vitamin A remedied the situation. That, of course, isn't definitive either, though.

desultadox said:

The funny thing is Rep-Cal is proud to have no vitamin A. From their site:

"HERPTIVITE is the first reptile vitamin without Vitamin A. Instead we use Beta Carotene which is an anti-oxidant that is converted into Vitamin A in a regulated way, so there is no threat of Vitamin A toxicity."

I wonder if THEY did any research on reptiles' ability to convert Beta Carotene. You'd think the exotic reptile hobby was popular (read: profitable) enough these days to warrant some studies into this hotly debated topic and finally give us a definitive answer.

I have personally experienced Beta Carotene supplements and Beta Carotene gut-loading be insufficient for a chameleon's needs, and preformed Vitamin A remedied the situation. That, of course, isn't definitive either, though.

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I actually think it is good that Herptivite has no preformed A in it because otherwise we would be seriously overdosing our chams. Excess beta carotene is simply flushed from the body via urination- retinol is not and will build up in vital organs and cause toxic shock. Chameleons don't convert beta carotene, but I think other reptiles do so it is better to have the safer version of the vitamin so that people aren't accidentally poisoning their pets. All it means is that you need to supplement your chams with retinol very, very occasionally. I use a fish oil based vitamin A gelcap meant for humans and put the tiniest dot of the liquid inside on a feeder about once every three months for my chams. Seriously, a pinprick sized spot and then I feed off the bug immediately. I like to err on the side of caution; once again, you can always put more in but you can't take it away.

If you don't supplement with Vitamin A do you feed a lot of insects that have big eyes, or large heads? As it is found in the eyes, and the nervous tissues in the head, but to say you dont need Vit A is not good. we all need our vitamins to remain healthy since we dont roam the world like intended

Docility said:

If you don't supplement with Vitamin A do you feed a lot of insects that have big eyes, or large heads? As it is found in the eyes, and the nervous tissues in the head, but to say you dont need Vit A is not good. we all need our vitamins to remain healthy since we dont roam the world like intended

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I think everybody here agrees on how important vit A is for our chameleon's nutrition. But, we are not debating that point.

We are debating whether or not beta carotene is a good source of vit A for chameleon.
Human (mammals) can convert beta carotene into vit A.
But, some scientist argue that chameleons do not have the ability to convert beta carotene. Therefore, the need of giving them retinyl palmitate (pre-formed vit A) as supplements.

The controversy lies in the fact that unlike beta carotene, Pre formed vit A can be toxic in excess amount (due to the fact that preformed vit A is fat soluble- therefore cannot be dumped by your chameleon's body- just like vitamin D3).