Babys are hatching now

[FaunaBgirl]

I will have a new veiled female and was there for the first hatch. This will go on for a couple of weeks. After a month, I will bring home my newby. That gives me 5 weeks to have the HUGE new cage built with UVB lights, basking lights and vaporizor pipes installed and working. At the bottom I have a mister that I will arrange so that the newby cannot get near it. Or I'll leave it out. But it's one of the ones that looks like smoke. Should be fun. The funnest part is being creative in making the best looking "fairyland" palace that would please any cham, as well as making it SAFE and at proper humidity and temperature.

Now... my question is.... Does enybody remember which week it is that the baby cham should be fed spiders. I KNOW they have a spider phase and I want to be sure I am ready for that. Everything in place. Also... Here where I live, the indigenous lizards LOVE aphids. Any chance I can feed some of those to my baby cham? Seems like they would be desert... like pudding or ice cream to them. lol

 

[jleahl]

I know Heika posted about feeding some babies aphids not too long ago. Just be certain there haven't been any pesticides anywhere around for a pretty big radius. You might try posting on the breeding forum; sometimes folks talk about neonate care there, too.


Have fun making your wonderland! Keep in mind the tiny one can't live in a big environment right away...

 

[Heika]

The brevs seem to love aphids. I collect them from rosebushes that have not been treated with pesticides. I have found the best way to collect them is to cut off small branches that are covered with them and drop the entire thing into the cage for the babies. They shoot them off pretty quickly.

I have never heard of a spider phase for chameleons. I believe that a lot of spiders have some toxicity levels though, so you may want to be very careful with that. Personally, I wouldn't feed my chameleons spiders.

Heika

 

[Jordan]

I have heard that Jacksons commonly eat spiders in the wild. I have never heard of the specific types though. Spiders can contain one of the seven venoms listed: nuerotoxins, myotoxins, haemorrhagins, haemortoxins, nephrotoxins, cardiotoxins, and necrotoxins. Any of these can be fatal.

It is common place to hear people refer to certain spiders as harmless. This is true to us because these spiders lack the fang size to penetrate our skin. When ingested it would be impossible to say what would happen then.

In the wild perhaps the small exposure every now and again allows certain chameleons to develop tolerances to certain toxins. They maybe genetically capable from birth to destroy these toxins. They may utilize behaviors such as eating mud or certain plants to nuetrilize the effects. It is really impossible to say without any extensive research on the subject. Even if these chameleons do devlop some sort of antivenom in their body it may not be the approriate one for the venom they are about to ingest from the spider you are feeding them.

With the abundance of good feeders on the market and in conjunction with proven wild caught insects I would say that variety in their diet should not be a problem. I personally would not take the risk.