Calumma parsonii

[Littlehorn]

Acquired 3 weeks ago. The little guy has been kept in the hydration chamber for the past 20 days. When it came in, it was a little bit de-hydrated and was only taking 2 silkworms a day.

It's now eating well, around 3-4 silkworms + a few crickets a day. This baby has an attitude, whenever I walk close. It will come out from the bushes to "stare" at you for like 30secs, then just swing itz tail and walk away.

After the silk moths at home has done their jobs with laying the eggs, I will usually tried to feed them to my chameleons. They are usually gone within 20secs. in my Panther cages. But with my little parson, it doesn't seems to like them.

The little guy diet consists: Silkworms, Crickets, Locusts, Orange-head roaches, assorted beetles.

Here's some photos;

 

[neonate]

Is it male or female ? looks female to me

 

[Littlehorn]

well, itz size is ~12cm sta., and also with the 3 stripes rule. It might be a male.
From the information I received, most female parsonii are green since they are babies.
Also I heard...heard from some sources that sexing parsonii is easy, we simply look for the "white dot" in the center bar...
But this baby does not have a white dot...so there is a bit of confusion for me here, hope someone can point out the sex for me, as I would seriously love to obtain the opposite sex so I can keep a pair..

 

[laurie]

Well if may be male or female but it sure is beautiful either way. Congrats. BTW what is a hydration chamber?

 

[Karen]

Beautiful baby

 

[beeze]

What a nice baby! Good luck with him/her.

 

[Chris Anderson]

I don't know who you talked to about sexing baby parsonii but there is no such thing as a three-stripe sexing rule with parsonii (both sexes can have three stripes on the body), nor are females green from hatching and both sexes can have the white dot on the flanks. These are completely useless sexing indicators. I've found that the first indicator of sex is that males will start to get eye turret coloration that is different from the coloration of the head. This isn't an absolute way to sex them but in conjunction with rostral structure (which is also not an absolute), it can be pretty indicative. Yours looks like a female to me.

Chris

 

[Littlehorn]

Hello Chris,
Thank you for your information.
I got my information from the past experience mos of the keepers we had in Asia. From the record of most of the parsonii keepers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, there has been record that shows there is a high percentage of parsonii babies which show 3 stripes and a white dot in the middle stripe to be male.
Of course these are all just non-official record from the past.
In regards to the eye turret coloration, we also have some record documenting that it is true that young males tends to develop a different coloration to their head and bodies at a very early stage.

Please understand that the reptile industry in Asia is a total mess. But it is starting to develop. All the information we had was only base on about 10 - 15 years of experience from past reptile keepers, it's still developing and it needs time.

I guess time will tell whether it is a male or female.

 

[Chamgirl]

He/she is very beautiful, I love her baby peachy colouration

 

[Littlehorn]

Hello Laurie,

A hydration chamber is some of what chameleons keepers will do when they first received their chameleons.
Let me explain it more in details; in Asia, there is typically 2 sources you can get a chameleon, it is either CBB from a few private breeders, or they are WC trafficked from Thailand. While breeders can provide a really good environment for their stocks, they can only provide a few species for sale, exp: Vieled Cham, Panther Cham, Jacksonii, etc.
For the underground market (Black Market) it will also be rare to find chameleons as there is not a huge market for them. For example if I need to find a Meller's Chameleon, it would be nearly impossible and the "import" number annually would be 2-3 sub-adults.
Shipments of reptiles from Thailand to other countries in Asia would take around 4-5 days, and most of the animals are kept separately in a cloth mesh bag, there is no heat/ cold pad to maintain a certain temperature. So usually when the animals came in, they are mostly de-hydrated.
So for some of us, what we do when we receive the shipment is we will introduce newly-acquired chameleon into a so-called "hydration chamber", in which it is basically the same setup as a normal chameleon cage but slightly smaller in size, with a higher humidity and with 15hrs of warm rain of water per day, the intention is to induce the chameleon to drink. Also the chameleon will be monitored for the 2 weeks to ensure that the feeding behavior is back to normal.

Last year, we have a few friends in Asia which spend some time in the chameleon farms for 2 months, and to study the way of keeping Chameleons, these group of people has really given us many valuable information and data on both keeping and breeding chameleons. They are in development to publish a book on the things they learned in the Madagascar Chameleon Farm (although itz probably gonna be in Chinese), and this is what we needed in Asia, more information and data.

*** One thing which we always avoid in the past was to use a waterfall/ a bowl of standing water in the chameleon cage, because we thought it will easily introduce bacteria to the chameleon. But from the field report from the chameleon farm, for the Parsonii and Panther breeders, they will place a "chopped-open" bamboo stick at different spot in the cage, because the chameleons do go and find these water sources and drink from it.