advise about when to introduce freerange?

[xcrystalx]

i will be adding a small free range to the side of the vivarium like below.




sorry its come up small and for my poor drawing but you get the my drift.
i will have a lose bit of vine that i will wrap around a bamboo stick inside so he can come out and when he doesnt i can just unwrap it and leave it hanging outside.

hes not here for another week.so want to ask now before he arrives. how long would you suggest i leave it till i leave the cage door open so he can wonder out onto the freerange?

i was thinking maybe after 4 weeks if he seems to be settling well??
i want him to be as stress free as possible.
i will not attempt to hand feed him for the first week.i will just mist him and pop his food in a feeder cup twice a day and leave him be.i will never pick him up unless he wants to climb on me.i think its best imo for them to call the shots. gaining his trust is what it all about

 

[Olimpia]

I started free-ranging one panther (who grew up to have the best personality of anyone I've had before or since) a week after I got him. I had a fake ficus, 6' tall, that I would leave in front of his open cage with a branch connecting the two and the first day it took him an hour or two to be confident enough to come out. He stayed out about 30 minutes and wandered back "home."

But the second day he came out much faster and stayed out longer. And so we went, until he was very comfortable leaving his cage with me in the room. I would only handle him when he was out free ranging and he became extremely tolerant.

So I started with free ranging about a week into it. Handling a few days/a week after that, and hand feeding almost from day 1 (but he was not very skiddish to begin with, thankfully.)

 

[xcrystalx]

thanks for sharing your experience .ill see how he goes an if after a week he seems ok ill try it.if not ill wait a further week

 

[nightanole]

I just took the door off the cage and let him run wild. It took about a month for him to figure out how to get back to the cage for sleeping ( i found him in odd spots for a while) and not get lost in the closet ( got stuck in a empty box once).

Now it has his routine down. wake up in cage, eat, walk to window, patrol the entire room for rogue chams, got back to cage for shower, sit on baby cage next to it, then wonder back to sleeping stick.

 

[xcrystalx]

my free range will only be small but i do have plans for a bigger one down the line.

 

[Jamire]

Thats sounds like quite an adventure for a Cham! Sounds like he is having fun

 

[Juliaf3]

thanks for sharing your experience .ill see how he goes an if after a week he seems ok ill try it.if not ill wait a further week

I LOVE this idea!!! My Cham just started really exploring his cage, I lam gonna have to do this!