First Time Chameleon Owner- Jackson Babies

Endangeredjen

New Member
This is day 4, with 3 Jackson chameleon babies. I live in Hawaii, I came across someone who was selling them 3 for $10, I believe these guys were caught in the wild, as you can find them hiking, many locals are selling and breeding them here. I now understand the amount of work needed to care for them, not such a bargain, but I have the persistence, time and resources to take care of them, so I'm going to do my best. I work at home and am able to stay at home with them and monitor them. Here's the rundown so far:

*2 males, 1 female, all about 3 inches long from snout to tail (tiny horns growing, so I was able to tell sex, not changing to green color yet, so I am guessing about 4 to 6wks?)
*Screened cage: 18w x12d x 20h inches. green reptile turf on the bottom of the cage, two bark pieces from the pet store on each side, two hanging artificial green plants
*The cage has been left inside next to my desk while I work during the day, there is a lot of light in here, I have drawn the shades so they don't get direct sunlight beating down on them. Daytime temp: 82 to 90 (when it hits 90, I turn on ceiling fans and cool down the room, usually stays at 82 to 85 all day with windows open). Night time: 72 to 75. Ample Humidity (Hawaii), have not bought UVB lamp or heating lamp as I was told they don't need it here, also plan on putting cage outside when they get bigger and can handle it.
*I am aware that they will have to be separated once they get bigger, I don't know when that is... Right now they are getting along fine, no fighting, or any individual at bottom of cage looking scared.
*Lots of misting: Misting plants whenever I see they are dried up, probably 3 to 4 times a day, if not more. I was spraying them by accident, but have learned not to do that, as they could inhale the water and it could lead to respiratory problems. I was told to make a drip system, since they need constant water at this stage, what do you think?
* Eating: They are eating a lot! Feeding them gut loaded pin head crickets from the pet store, they have went thru a hundred in last 4 days, but I think that I lost a bunch, also I suspect that they may be able to escape from the big cage, but none the less I have seen each one eat 3 to 5 crickets in a row at feeding times. Not sure how often to feed them, yesterday I fed them maybe three times, so they ate anywhere from 7 to 10 crickets each. I'm not sure if I should take them out of the cage when feeding, I don't want a whole bunch of extra pinheads hiding and then coming out at night to attack them. Also I was told to feed the pinheads, varying between two different powders each day, since they were just gut loaded, I sort of slacked on this, didn't put in piece of carrot or potatoe in there, maybe some pinheads died, seems like I ran out very quickly.
* I am trying to handle as little as possible, I'm not taking them out at all, I have been in there misting and that seems to disturb them quite a bit, also I am here working and moving around a lot, that could be distracting for them, but other than that, I am trying to keep stress to a minimum... What do you think? How am I doing so far? Any suggestions would be great, as I have heard Jacksons are notorious for dropping dead, babies especially!! Got a couple to eat a dead pinhead from my finger, pretty cool, they are up and active, have been roaming around looking for those pinheads in there! What do I look for if things are going south?
Thanks for any help!!

Jen
 
I have quite a few jacksons chameleons (5 adults and 12 babies that are 6 weeks old). The temperatures you describe are too hot for them generally, although I understand that the Hawaiian Jackson's chameleons do tolerate warmer temperatures, so that might be fine for them. As long as they have access to sunlight (not through a window, as that filters out the UV rays) they don't need a UVB lamp, however even the babies need the UVB, so if they're not getting outside, they need one. Get a Reptisun 5.0 - they give off little heat - with a screen cage it won't heat it up at all. As far as misting, I mist my babies by hand 4 times a day and do a gentle misting over the entire cage to be sure that everthing gets wet. This also keeps the cage a bit cooler.

At 3 inches long, they can eat larger than pinheads, 1/4" crickets would be fine for them. My babies are smaller, only about 2" long and they eat 1/4" crickets without a problem. The larger crickets also die less readily than the pinheads. You can also feed them fruit flies - the d. hydei are larger and better for that size baby.

You'll probably have to separate them at about 3 to 4 months, when they start showing any color (unless you see them starting to get aggressive before that). Not sure of the age of yours based on size, 4 to 6 weeks sounds young to me for 3 inches long, but my babies are the subspecies j. jacksonii, which are smaller than the j. xantholophus yours are.

Hope this helps... if you're interested, a good book to check out would be "Chameleons: Care and Breeding of Jackson's, Panther, Veiled, and Parson's" by Gary Ferguson. They have a whole section on the Jackson's and it details the care exactly.
 
I have to agree with Melrito. I had Jacksons when I lived on Maui, they did great in the cooler temps of Up Country Maui, but were over heated when I moved back down to sea level. Having a live plant doesn't hurt either, they like to climb and it adds a sense of security for them. Mine also really liked the dripper I had set up for them. It dripped off the leaves and into the pot the live plant was in.
 
Thanks so much!

Any type of guidance is great! Thanks for the advise, good to know I am moving in the right direction. I will definitely get some larger crickets and the UVB light, also keeping the temp down, today, they have been at 80 degrees and seem more active and happy. How often do you guys feed them? I have been sort of free for all feeding, not really on much of a schedule....
 
I fed my baby Jacksons 2-3 times a day. Some might disagree, but my rule of thumb with babies is, as long as they keep eating-feed them. At 3" they should be O.K. with 10-12 1/4" crickets a day. Hydei fruit flies are a good feeder to add in addition to crickets. They are a little different nutrition wise and add for a balanced diet. Since your in Hawaii, an outdoor cage in a partially shaded area would be very benificial. Since Jacksons are living throuhgout Hawaii, your temperature/UVB/humidity parameters would be met and be ideal in theory. Good luck.
 
Feed the babies basically as much as they want, I also feed my babies 2-3 times a day. Once they're older, you can cut back to once a day and then every 2nd day once they're about a year old (every day for the female if you are breeding her).
 
xanthoman jmo

got your pm, have been living on my boat for the last year, so not keeping chams at the current time, also, spent a stay in the hospital, so havent been on the forums much.

to be honest, a trio of jacksons is probably not the best way to start in the hobby, but, there is no reason it cant work (if they are currently healthy) and you are serious, you are certainly in the best place to give it a try.

first things first. they can go downhill in a matter of days without uvb, so imo, at least several days a week, i would start putting their cage outside asap. i would set it somewhere where it has overhead. and surrounding foliage and peekaboo sun. young xanths can be kind of prone to overheating and dont handle it well, so if temps are over 80*f in the shade, then i would mist the entire cage and surrounding area several times a a day, especially during peak temps. imo, i would bring their cage in at night so you dont have to worry about critters. just to be clear, sun shined through window glass does not provide uvb. uvb does not penetrate most glass in any significant amounts.

with tiny horns showing, i would say they are 6 weeks min, probably more like 8-10 weeks, but kind of hard to say without seeing them, pics would help.

when you say 3" snout to tail, do you mean the base of the tail, or overall length? chams are usually measured in terms of svl (snout to vent length) an accurate svl measure would give us a better idea of their true age. knowing their true age would be important imo, the female should be separated out before 3" svl. hydei are a great food but should be fed conservatively unless you know that they were not raised on medium containing vinegar (vinegar is a common ff media ingredient, vinegar contains acetic acid which breaks the bond of calcium) for an experiment soak an eggshell in vinegar overnight, it will turn the eggshell into a gelatinous like rubber. bones are primarily calcium like eggshells, vinegar isnt going to hurt a human, but imo, excessive amounts could lead to problems for a very young cham jmo.

by now they should easily be able to handle blue or green bottle flies. bbf or gbf are easy to raise. bottle flies are probably one of their favorite foods anyway and much easier on their young digestive tracts. imo, cricks, even pinheads, are too exoskeletal, and too high in phosphorus, so (in general,) the less cricks you can feed, the better. bottle flies can be raised by putting a 1" sq of raw fresh fish in a crumpled plastic sack with just enough moisture in the bottom so it wont dry out, extra spraying may be necessary, place in the shade, in less than 48 hrs you should have visible fly eggs, once that happens transfer to a new bag with a pile of ripe (criscrossed) cantelope slices, keep moist but not drowning. you should have maggots in another 72hrs max. once you have a stable population of maggots, you can seperate them from the fish/cantelope, into what ever dry gutload you use, and start keeping them in the fridge. just pm if you need more help on raising / handling of bottle flies. bottle flies wont attack chams at night like cricks and if you feed cricks, especially small ones, there are always cricks hiding, and they can be a nightime problem for neonates, little cricks are better at hiding than larger cricks , so i suggest limiting cricks to what is expected to be immediately fed upon, and using the largest appropriate size when you do feed them. (another good reason for changing your cage liner frequently.

imo, i wouldnt offer any supps other than plain cal for at least another month. even plain cal can cause probs. so i would limit to about once a week and ultra sparingly, if your feeders look like ghosts, imo, it is too much. i would recomend about the equivalent of about one match head for about 2 doz pinheads or 12 med or 6 large cricks.

i would start in a month, supplementing with sticky tongue farms vite-all about once every two weeks via gutloading or direct dusting of their feeders, only dust/gutload enough feeders for one feeding, the rest of the time just use regular cham healthy gutload. if they get minimal outside exposure (more than 1 hr a week), you should skip d3 all together, one less thing to miscalculate or go wrong.

a $20 digital scale is a very good investment, should weigh in .1g increments on up to about 500g is a handy range. you should weigh weekly and keep a journal to establish a normal pattern of growth, any unusual weight changes might be viewed as a red flag.

handling as necessary wont hurt a bit as long as it is done properly. never rush them , never pull them off of their perch or your hand , always let them make the move with minimal coaxing. bamboo skewers are good handling tools.

they should have plain water (no vites or other supps) available in the form of a dripper during all daylight hrs imo about once every 8-10 secs is a good drip rate. should be changed daily, their cage needs to be cleaned regularly, imo, i would x the reptile turf and instead cut several light colored terry cloth liners to fit the bottom of your cage, that way you can always have a clean one handy and just swap them out every other day. then you can just run them through the wash (separate from personal laundry) with bleach and hot water.

they dont usually over eat but imo you should still limit their feeders too just what they can eat. (exception is bottle flies, a few extra bottle flies hanging out wont hurt a thing).


the best advice i can give overall, is to learn your animals intimately, learn every pore and nodule, learn every skin anomaly and learn the exact appearance of their eyes, in the event something is going wrong, visual indicators will provide the earliest warning, but they can only noticed in time if you know exactly how your animal is supposed to look.

not to be negative, but the overwhelming majority of wild hawaiian xanths have some sort of parasitic infection. these tend to be a bigger issue in captivity. since you got them in hawaii then its a reasonable assumption that they were wild caught or bred from short term captive wild caught parents. so a fecal analysis in order. if they were full adult chams a fecal float for microscopy would be in order, but young chams often do not produce a large enough fecal qty for a fecal float, so it would be wise to seek a vet or pathologist willing to do a fecal smear. fecal smears require less material but may be harder to read. if you are unable to find a vet willing to do a smear, then often local universities have an animal pathology dept that are often eager to help. clean cage liners are an absolute must for any sort of fecal microscopy. xanths younger than 6 mths often dont deal well with some of the treatments, if they are still going strong at an estimated 6-7 months then that would be a good time for analysis and treatment. (to have it out of the way by prime breeding age of 11-16 months)

in order for them to have a realistic chance long term, you will need to learn their husbandry requirements in depth. there is much to learn, so now would be a good time to start studying cham nutrition, gutloading etc. if you havent already read the supplementation sticky, that would be a good place to start, but remember, that xanths and montanes in general, often require much less than what is usually recomended.

i dont know what powders you are using, but if its anything other than low phosphorus plain calcium (no d3), then stop, it will almost certainly lead to problems. they are uber-sensitive to over-supplementation during the early mths. imo, the likelyhood of over-supplementation is far greater and more dangerous than under-supplementation, and far more difficult to correct. it will take actual study to get a feel for what is appropriate for any given animal, feel free to post and ask all of the questions you like, but honestly, trying to learn enough with just reading a few stickies and asking a few questions probably wont suffice, and if you wait until there are problems, to start, it will probably be too late.

there is always more to learn than what you already know, the bottom line is, the more you study, the better keeper you will become.

if you think you are having problems or are just confused. feel free to repost or pm. in the meantime, read every xanth article or post you can find. jmo

ps. pinheads can get through most cham screen
 
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x the cotton / fly tips

got your pm. jmo, i would x the cotton in the corners. cricks have snaggy little barbs on their legs and may even eat the cotton, for chams, ingesting even a small amount of cotton is far more likely to be fatal than a few nightime bites from cricks. if it really bugs you, you could set them up in a temporary cage for 48hrs, clean their regular cage, and use food safe silicone in the corners and crevices.
but i dont really think thats necessary.
to limit the amount of escapees/hiders, just feed only the amount that they are likely to eat in the next 20min or so and use a feeding dish that is hard for them to get out of. a small shallow jar with a lip, like a baby jar, clear feeding containers arent recomended, so i would paint or tape the outside. a few hiders arent a big problem, you just dont want hoards of them.
about the maggots, you want them to slow down, and you dont want them all to turn into flies all at once, in fact i would start some more magots in about a week.
best to keep the maggots in a warmer part of your fridge, below 40* you will start to get some die off.
at 80* the maggots should pupate in less than 48 hrs, they will look like little brown/purple hardshell turds. dont mistake them for being dead, they should turn into adult flies 24-48hrs after that.
so, with that time frame in mind, just take out what you need ahead of time and place them into a controlled/restricted release container and place it in their cage. the flies will only live a few days at those temps, so if it doesnt look like they are going eat them all, you can just tape the container off and put them back in the fridge, they will last like a week or more, if its not too cold. flies are more sensitive too cold than maggots. left in maggot form, they can last for several weeks or more in the fridge.
if you intend to keep a stash of pre hatched adult flies on hand at room temp, then they should have 3 things in their container, to keep them as healthy as possible
in 3 seperate little condiment cups, i would put in one, water with a sq of terrycloth, so they dont drown (some sponges have germicide/fungicide)
in the second cup i would put honey or bee pollen, if you use honey, then use a sq of a coarse plastic dish scrubber so your flies dont drown.
filth flies need cholesterol, without it they will die prematurely, so in the third cup put some powdered buttermilk jmo glad to hear its going well.
 
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