My fiancé thinks I am Crazy!

[Jackiewoodams]

Well we have had our veiled chameleon for 4 weeks now, and have learned a lot from this forum and its members! So thanks to everyone that has helped me! Our little guy is a pig when it comes to his food! Which makes me happy. But I am now in the process of learning how to raise and breed crickets and silkworms to feed my little man! My fiancé thinks that I am a little nuts that I am thinking about breed his food but I see an way of getting his food cheaper but with a little more work! I think that I can classify myself as having an addiction to chameleons now! I am on here every day reading the stories and learning as much as I can.

If anyone has any tips or suggests about raising crickets and silkworms. Please let me know!

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Well we have had our veiled chameleon for 4 weeks now, and have learned a lot from this forum and its members! So thanks to everyone that has helped me! Our little guy is a pig when it comes to his food! Which makes me happy. But I am now in the process of learning how to raise and breed crickets and silkworms to feed my little man! My fiancé thinks that I am a little nuts that I am thinking about breed his food but I see an way of getting his food cheaper but with a little more work! I think that I can classify myself as having an addiction to chameleons now! I am on here every day reading the stories and learning as much as I can.

If anyone has any tips or suggests about raising crickets and silkworms. Please let me know!

Crickets are smelly and not the easiest to breed to size. I would recommend if you are going to breed your own feeders look into roaches.

Crickets are pretty easy to breed up to the 2wk size after that it is probably worth it to buy them. If you wanted to experiment buy 1000 pin heads and raise them to adults. You will be shocked at the rate of loss. To get big crickets you have to breed a lot of them.

Welcome to the addiction. You are not alone and we will all take you down with us. Chameleon keepers are enablers and will only encourage the addiction. You are in it now! get used to it!

 

[Jackiewoodams]

Thanks Ryan! I live in Florida and I can't get suppliers to mail me roaches and my fiance will not pick the roaches! So I am going to try with the crickets!

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Thanks Ryan! I live in Florida and I can't get suppliers to mail me roaches and my fiance will not pick the roaches! So I am going to try with the crickets!

Ah, just saw that.... I believe you can keep discoid roaches. I may be wrong. Good news is FL is a good place to raise almost any bug.

 

[jannb]

I agree with Ryan on the crickets. It would be a ton of work for one cham. We raise most of our feeders except crickets. I buy those from Lazy H (863) 675-3109 and Brad is wonderful and his crickets and super worms are very cheap. Roaches are by far the easiest to raise followed by super worms (it just takes them a LONG time). We also raise silks and it's not hard but allot of work when the eggs hatch.

 

[laurie]

You are on the right track. raising your own food means you know what kind is food your feeders eat! i have tried crickets more times than we want to talk about, my advice, buy your crickets. Raise roaches, supers, silkies, all are easier. But silkies take more time than you will believe, by that I mean taking your time to care for them as they are wayyyyy labor intense.

Enjoy your first cham, and the rest who will some how just appear.

 

[wendyeeeo]

I agree with buying young crickets in bulk (500-1000) and then housing them in a large tub as they get bigger. I ordered mine from a herp pet store, but you could also get them online. I fed two chams that way and only had to replenish every 3 weeks. To house them I had a large plastic tub with no lid, added crushed walnut shells as a substrate, the cardboard egg cartons so they weren't on top of one another, the cricket crack and then sliced oranges for the hydration. I'd add gutload items as well, but the crack and oranges were enough to keep them alive and healthy. Don't buy the crickets too large to begin with - they will not live very long. I used a window screen on top of the tub and left the tub in the cham room. The most 'stink' was from the dead crickets, so I'd use the tongs and pick out any dead ones every week or so (I didn't lose many tho). The cricket poop also stinks, so replacing the egg cartons often is a good idea.
My chameleon passed away six weeks ago and I've still got crickets alive and well! (I'm getting another cham soon).

Silkworms (my fave feeder) are VERY easy to raise from eggs and keep until you feed them to your chams. They never stink! (unless you squish a dead one accidentally - lol). I never tried to breed them - I just bought the eggs and followed the simple rules they gave for care. I bought the silkworm food in powder form and cook it up in the microwave - very easy! The silkworms lasted as long as the chams wanted to eat them.

The whole concept of keeping bugs/breeding bugs as feeders is definitely something to get used to. I used to FREAK about the crickets! But you get used to it because it's soooo much cheaper to have bulk bugs than to buy as needed feeders.

Good luck!!

 

[Jackiewoodams]

Thanks guys! I will give it a try! The only kids I have right now are my pets! So I have a lot of time to give to them! So we will see how it goes! I am a little excited and have a game plan that I am going to work on tonight after I finish helpign with the fishing gear! Have to keep the fiancé happy so he will build me another cage when I get to the point of getting another chameleon! Like everyone on has said I am sure another one will show up at our house!

 

[Jackiewoodams]

Wendyeeeo- Sorry to hear about you chameleon passing! Thank you for the information! I was a little freaked out about the worms that I got yesterday but I picked one up and tried to hand feed him, so I am totally over that now! Hand feeding didnt go so well but it is a work in progess!

 

[wendyeeeo]

I've never been too skilled with hand feeding either - I prefer using those long, metal feeding tongs instead of holding bugs with my fingers. I get a bit wacky when they wiggle! Lol If you use the tongs just right, you can position a cricket to be very squirmy near them on a branch or something - just be careful of their tongue sticking to tongs! I would just relax my hand, let tongue & bug be taken in by cham... The cham will release the tongue. Do not pull back - you could injure their tongues - a horrible event more common than I would have realized. My favorite is a simple clear Tupperware bowl Tied to a branch & let them feed on dusted crickets or whatever at their leisure.

 

[Monzon]

You are crazy. But you are in excellent company.......

 

[Jackiewoodams]

LOL! I usually feed him with a feeing cup but I just wanted to try it! I am getting even more crazier I just found out that I can get the forums on my phone! Yay! Just got done fishing and I can text about my chameleon!