Confused about supplementation. Again!

I started a thread a while back to make sure that we were supplementing our male veiled correctly. We have since been using calcium dust daily, and twice a month using nutrobal, which has vitamins and D3. I emailed the breeder yesterday with an update on him, and mentioned he was growing very fast, and was told I have my supplementing all wrong! He said (and i quote)

"In my experience you can’t slow a Yemen’s rate of growth (unless you starve them or turn down their heat which will kill them which I don’t recommend) so correct supplementation is crucial.

Yemens will grow at that speed regardless.

MBD is not caused by growing too fast – it is caused by lack of ‘available’ dietary calcium. For them to have ‘available’ calcium they need calcium and vitamin D3 at each feed!!! so your twice a month Nutrobal is a severe underdose – I know people who have only used Nutrobal twice a week and have had calcium deficiency problems due to lack of D3.

I had expected you to be following the advice in my care-sheet in which I advise you to use Repton (or Nutrobal) every day – it states that for a reason.

Although they manufacture some D3 themselves under the UVB they require a significant amount of oral D3 to make sure they have enough to utilise all that calcium you are giving him.

Without D3 you can feed him kilogrammes of calcium but he won’t be able to utilise more than a small fraction of it.

The combination calcium/D3 formulations have been developed such that there is a vast excess of calcium in them compared to the amount of D3, so you can’t overdose them because there is always a surplus of calcium to balance up the D3. It therefore does not make sense to avoid using them because they might cause MBD – they don’t!

Available calcium deficiency will present gradually as it is a cumulative effect - first signs are muscular tremors, weakness and eventually an inability to grasp the branch resulting in them toppling off (lack of available calcium for muscle function).

Soft deformed bones develop next (MBD) and their legs can break under the weight of their own body – this is commonly the fate of Iguanas fed on fruit with little or no calcium and D3 supplementation.

You may get away with your current supplementing regime but I would hate to have to say ‘I warned you’ a few months later on.

Your enclosure should be large enough so I would see how you feel when he nears adult size"

So, what supplementation schedule should i be using?

If you are worried, increase use of the D3 to once a week, even twice a week. I am not familiar with the produce you are using, so I can't say whether or not using it every day would be dangerous. I can tell you I only use Rep-Cal Ca with D3 once every other week to all ages, with just the occasional extra dose here and there for babies. I have raised a number of panther chameleons from egg to adult without issue with this schedule.

Rep-Cal has 400,000 IU/kg of D3 (that's a lot, hence using twice a month is sufficient)
Miner-All (I) has 4,400 IU/kg of D3 (that's quite a bit less than repcal, so its probably fine to use this alot more often, possibly daily!)

What does Nutrobal have?

I currently have the following that I use -

Calypso Cricket Dust - it says made of 99% pure calcium carbonate and must be combined with uvb lighting and adequate levels of dietary or supplementary vitamin d3 (so no d3 in this then!)

Nutrobal - "a high potency calcium balancer and multivitamin supplement" - says it contains the following per gram - 200mg calcium, 150IU D3 plus vitamins A, E, K, B1, B2, B6, B12, C, folic, nicotinic & pantothenic acids, biotin, choline, niacin and minerals Na, Fe, Co, I, Mn, Zn, Se and Cu.

I also feed the crickets T-Rex Cricket Diet which has the following: Calcium min 9.5%, max 10.5%, Phosphorus 0.7%, Vitamin A Acetate 17,500 IU/kilo, Vitamin D-3 min 3500 IU/Kilo along with their fresh organic fruit, veggies and bee pollen.

I am obviously worried that I am undersupplementing Hugo, and the breeder seemed a little angry with me in his email (hopefully he will still sell me one of his translucent veiled when they are born!). I thought i was doing everything right as i had checked and checked before we got another, but i have since seen something that said young chams should get d3 a couple of times a week until 6 months.

Sounds like the Nutrobol has very low amounts of D3, levels that would probably be safe to use daily. However I'm not sure you want to provide the Vitamin A and the other Vits and Minerals daily.

I think if I were you, I'd buy a Calcium with D3 powder like Rep-Cal with D3 and use it sparingly every other week, and use the Nutrobol the opposite weeks.

I the meantime, I would use the Nutrobol every other day
Or try to increase the UVB exposure (natural manufacture of VitD) by housing the chameleon outside in part sun (weather permitting).

And perhaps tell the breeder youre sorry, even if you're not sorry.
Breeders also make mistakes! I'm sure he or she will get over it.

I think there is a wealth of wisdom on this forum that generally outweighs the experience of a single breeder.

I'm not going to tell you how to supplement your chameleons. This is what I do and the results.

I grow my veiled chameleons much slower than most people do. I keep the temperature in the cages fairly even with the warmest areas in the low to mid 80's. I haven't had a case of MBD for many many years in these chameleons. The females generally live to be over 6 years old...some 7+ and the males generally live to be even older.

I supplement at most feedings with Rep-cal (without D3), twice a month I dust with Rep-cal with D3 and twice a month I use Herptivite. I gutload the crickets with a wide assortment of greens and veggies.

I use a Repti-sun 5.0 linear tube light on the cages along with a regular fluorescent white light. For the males, I add a regular incandescent light bulb in a hood. I don't usually use a spot/basking light on the females.

I've been keeping chameleons for over 20 years and although my original methods have evolved, I have been using the above method for over 10 years.

Rapid growth and overfeeding of the females in particular can lead to constipation, prolapses, egglaying difficulties, and often MBD. I'm not saying that supplementation might not play a part in this...I think it does....but it needs further study IMHO to know why and what.

My concern with giving them D3 from supplements and preformed vitamin A is that both can be overdosed...and from what I have read if they are in a type of balance with each other the overdose symptoms aren't always apparent. I think that they can still cause damage to the organs in this situation...but I have no scientific articles that have proved it right now....its just my feeling.

In your post you quoted "Without D3 you can feed him kilogrammes of calcium but he won’t be able to utilise more than a small fraction of it."...I believe this is true. The problem comes in knowing how much D3 from supplement is too much. If a chameleon gets its D3 from UVB exposure, as long as it can move in and out of the UVB it shouldn't cause an overdose.

Your post also quoted...."Although they manufacture some D3 themselves under the UVB they require a significant amount of oral D3 to make sure they have enough to utilize all that calcium you are giving him" and "The combination calcium/D3 formulations have been developed such that there is a vast excess of calcium in them compared to the amount of D3, so you can’t overdose them because there is always a surplus of calcium to balance up the D3. It therefore does not make sense to avoid using them because they might cause MBD – they don’t!"....if the amount of D3 is right and the amount of calcium is not overly excessive, then the D3 and calcium used to go along with the D3 should be alright...but if you overdo the D3 AND the calcium both are you damaging anything or causing other problems?? Does the calcium then end up being deposited in places where it shouldn't be??

Here's an article worth reading...
http://chameleonnews.com/?page=article&id=102

Hope you get it figured out!