Can you house a male and female veiled together

Breanna

Breanna

New Member
I am new to the chameleon world and trying to get as much knowledge and research in before I bring one home, but my question is can you house a male and female together? I see a lot of people selling in pairs, so just wondering if i get a pair do I need separate cages for them?
 
They need to be kept seperate. when they are young it is OK, but after 2-3 months they need their own homes. If you plan to mate a male and female, don't buy from the same clutch....
 
Hi, sorry but I don't agree 100% with you bec.I have kept my male and female together since they were 4 weeks old and they were very happy with each other. My only suggestion would be to make sure when the female is gravid you must separate them and give peace and quiet for the female to egg laying. I know lot of people will say I'm wrong I know it is can be different, depends on their personality, the size of the cage etc., but this is how I done it.
 
kicsylany said:
Hi, sorry but I don't agree 100% with you bec.I have kept my male and female together since they were 4 weeks old and they were very happy with each other. My only suggestion would be to make sure when the female is gravid you must separate them and give peace and quiet for the female to egg laying. I know lot of people will say I'm wrong I know it is can be different, depends on their personality, the size of the cage etc., but this is how I done it.
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Hate to be this way but either you have been lucky (most likely) or your female has been gravid a lot ( very bad for her will shorten her life). To tell a new veiled owner, who would not know how to tell if they had stressed chameleons until one of the two died, that putting them together is very irresponsible imo. I don't feel that veileds should EVER be kept together, but that is just me. If a knowledgeable keeper elects to do it so be it. They know what they are doing and what to watch for. However please don't offer this type of advice to a new keeper so their first experience with chameleons is most probably seeing one die.
 
laurie said:
Hate to be this way but either you have been lucky (most likely) or your female has been gravid a lot ( very bad for her will shorten her life). To tell a new veiled owner, who would not know how to tell if they had stressed chameleons until one of the two died, that putting them together is very irresponsible imo. I don't feel that veileds should EVER be kept together, but that is just me. If a knowledgeable keeper elects to do it so be it. They know what they are doing and what to watch for. However please don't offer this type of advice to a new keeper so their first experience with chameleons is most probably seeing one die.
Click to expand...

well said. Please take into account the experience of the person you are replying to. I don't think males and females should be kept together, period.
 
laurie said:
Hate to be this way but either you have been lucky (most likely) or your female has been gravid a lot ( very bad for her will shorten her life). To tell a new veiled owner, who would not know how to tell if they had stressed chameleons until one of the two died, that putting them together is very irresponsible imo. I don't feel that veileds should EVER be kept together, but that is just me. If a knowledgeable keeper elects to do it so be it. They know what they are doing and what to watch for. However please don't offer this type of advice to a new keeper so their first experience with chameleons is most probably seeing one die.
Click to expand...

I setup this account to chime into this ancient thread because it came up highly ranked in google. I kept chameleons as a kid with a blend of success and failure.

Found this thread when considering re-entering the space with my own children. I have to share that the greatest success I had was a 300 gallon vivarium with 3 Veiled chameleons, 1 male, 2 female, living with a blend of other predators (tree frogs, salamanders, and geckos mainly, one uncharacteristically large leopard frog, and one green tree snake). We (my best friend and I) were not particularly smart about it, we built the enclosure when I was in 6th grade. The arrangement had a bunch of random house plants, acceptable ventilation with good daily misting and one of those early fog machines from the 90's. Probably the saving grace was the very eager application of a variety of live prey animals to the habitat always powdered in some form of vitamin dust. The Chameleons all lived over 5 years. The ground gecko lived for like 15 years, ending up in the hands of a distant relative, the salamanders out lived the arrangement and similarly went off to reside with distant relatives when time to depart for college. The tree frogs were cartoonishly chubby and yet acrobatic. The failures of this arrangement were the green tree snake didn't make it a year, and we started with some smaller climbing geckos that got eaten by the chameleons. We even subsidized anoles when they were bulk discount at the local trade swap, if they got eaten, so be it, but a dozen in there could even reproduce and last for about 18 months and take lots of stress out of the social hierarchy.


I don't think our chameleons ever mated, the eggs were always infertile, or didn't hatch at the least.

I did see some of those dominance displays, not really fighting just lots of "don't come over here" type behavior. Until they'd sometimes just hangout... then be surprised to be so close and then spread out and do their dances from afar.

I'm NOT advising keeping them together. Not in the slightest. It was the 90's, I didn't even know what the internet was and came into the hobby without even knowing how to properly pronounce the word Chameleon.

Just sharing an experience. My take away is probably this for most any successful endeavor into animals husbandry... exceed the minimum habitat requirements, it grants you a great deal of grace in the care of the animal, weather swimming, flying, climbing or crawling.

Particularly for terrariums, particularly for arboreal animals where most of the habitat is air, it is just so darn easy to build a oversized cage for the money. And if you are gonna "experiment" having done more of that in aquariums as an adult, have a backup plan. Have a spare home waiting just in case things go a little sideways.

And since this is a predator pet I think its ethically based to suggest in any LARGER "social" environment to consider a "dither" animal. An expendable mid tier animal, a notch above food, not intended as food but as something to act as a buffer between the predators need to eat and the predators social angst. In fish tanks, guppies, danios, rainbows and others serve this function well for many community tanks.

Having typed out this whole reply, I'd surmise our idiotic success here probably came from 4 things, over large environment, dense dense planting to brake up line of sight, constant availability of good and varied food sources, and the sacrifice of our green anoles. I mean with perspective I'm amazed the chameleons didn't eat every other animal in the tank then kill each other... But this also outlines the original response from summoner12, that the RULE is don't keep them together. If you want to try with any hope for success, realize its a completely next level endeavor.

The OP clearly has moved on in life but wanted to leave this here to inform the discussion for what its worth.

Cheers!
 
KamikaziChameleon said:
I setup this account to chime into this ancient thread because it came up highly ranked in google. I kept chameleons as a kid with a blend of success and failure.

Found this thread when considering re-entering the space with my own children. I have to share that the greatest success I had was a 300 gallon vivarium with 3 Veiled chameleons, 1 male, 2 female, living with a blend of other predators (tree frogs, salamanders, and geckos mainly, one uncharacteristically large leopard frog, and one green tree snake). We (my best friend and I) were not particularly smart about it, we built the enclosure when I was in 6th grade. The arrangement had a bunch of random house plants, acceptable ventilation with good daily misting and one of those early fog machines from the 90's. Probably the saving grace was the very eager application of a variety of live prey animals to the habitat always powdered in some form of vitamin dust. The Chameleons all lived over 5 years. The ground gecko lived for like 15 years, ending up in the hands of a distant relative, the salamanders out lived the arrangement and similarly went off to reside with distant relatives when time to depart for college. The tree frogs were cartoonishly chubby and yet acrobatic. The failures of this arrangement were the green tree snake didn't make it a year, and we started with some smaller climbing geckos that got eaten by the chameleons. We even subsidized anoles when they were bulk discount at the local trade swap, if they got eaten, so be it, but a dozen in there could even reproduce and last for about 18 months and take lots of stress out of the social hierarchy.


I don't think our chameleons ever mated, the eggs were always infertile, or didn't hatch at the least.

I did see some of those dominance displays, not really fighting just lots of "don't come over here" type behavior. Until they'd sometimes just hangout... then be surprised to be so close and then spread out and do their dances from afar.

I'm NOT advising keeping them together. Not in the slightest. It was the 90's, I didn't even know what the internet was and came into the hobby without even knowing how to properly pronounce the word Chameleon.

Just sharing an experience. My take away is probably this for most any successful endeavor into animals husbandry... exceed the minimum habitat requirements, it grants you a great deal of grace in the care of the animal, weather swimming, flying, climbing or crawling.

Particularly for terrariums, particularly for arboreal animals where most of the habitat is air, it is just so darn easy to build a oversized cage for the money. And if you are gonna "experiment" having done more of that in aquariums as an adult, have a backup plan. Have a spare home waiting just in case things go a little sideways.

And since this is a predator pet I think its ethically based to suggest in any LARGER "social" environment to consider a "dither" animal. An expendable mid tier animal, a notch above food, not intended as food but as something to act as a buffer between the predators need to eat and the predators social angst. In fish tanks, guppies, danios, rainbows and others serve this function well for many community tanks.

Having typed out this whole reply, I'd surmise our idiotic success here probably came from 4 things, over large environment, dense dense planting to brake up line of sight, constant availability of good and varied food sources, and the sacrifice of our green anoles. I mean with perspective I'm amazed the chameleons didn't eat every other animal in the tank then kill each other... But this also outlines the original response from summoner12, that the RULE is don't keep them together. If you want to try with any hope for success, realize its a completely next level endeavor.

The OP clearly has moved on in life but wanted to leave this here to inform the discussion for what its worth.

Cheers!
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LOL I think you got really lucky that they never went after each other and it probably had to do with the space and all the other animals they were able to kill off. Veileds can be quite aggressive with anything in their environment.


But within the forum we do not recommend housing any chameleons together due to the risk of them harming one another or one declining due to an established pecking order. Unfortunately we see it here a lot where someone will attempt to house two together and there are always consequences that come from it. Most breeders are now even separating babies into individual cages so they can grow up without the pecking order and competition that can kill them off. This makes for stronger healthier babies being raised as singles.
 
Beman said:
LOL I think you got really lucky that they never went after each other and it probably had to do with the space and all the other animals they were able to kill off. Veileds can be quite aggressive with anything in their environment.


But within the forum we do not recommend housing any chameleons together due to the risk of them harming one another or one declining due to an established pecking order. Unfortunately we see it here a lot where someone will attempt to house two together and there are always consequences that come from it. Most breeders are now even separating babies into individual cages so they can grow up without the pecking order and competition that can kill them off. This makes for stronger healthier babies being raised as singles.
Click to expand...
I agree with this 100% I guess my answer to him is the same as the company line. The OP is probably thinking can I do 2 chameleons long term in a 6 ft tank, NOPE!

Because of my generally idiosyncratic approach, I've made my own terrariums, and aquariums, and filtration over the last nearly 30 years. I've been pushing the boundaries of what is considered "acceptable" but excelling in health and in quality of husbandry since that habitat. That was a fluke, but it has informed many other endeavors to be much more successful. To give a general sense of my measure, if I can get the apex animals in a community or social setup to reproduce successfully, and particularly reliably, I'm succeeding. So by that standard the habitat was a failure clearly.

I do generally cringe at the herpetological Pokémon ethos that is prevalent in the hobby (and animal husbandry broadly.) To define that, I see it as the "what is the minimum requirements to keep this thing happy enough it lives past the median age." then filling a closet or room with as many tiny enclosures as possible. I bread Africans cichlids for about 3 years, and I had a very uncommon setup for that in my region (the Midwest.) The smallest spawning tank was 75 gallons, half were over 100 gallons, where most hobbyists used 20-40 gallons, I used 20-40 gallons aquariums for fry rearing or isolation tanks in special situations, typically breeders would use 5-10 gallons. The filtration was a 300 gallon sump system where the standard you'd see in the hobby was sponge filters. I stacked tanks with great social consideration that typically had 2-3 species spawning simultaneously, again something typically considered impossible or negligent, as spawning would beget aggression and loss of life by the rhetoric of the hobby.

Non of that is to disagree with the rule, not at all. Just to inform how I see the rule, and I ponder if I built a LXWXH 10'x4'x6' vivarium could I cohabitate any species of chameleon rationally? That's how idiosyncratic I am. Drives my wife crazy. If I did over 300 gallon vivarium as a child on a shoe string budget what could I execute on now.

So I guess that would be my question to this thread and forum, is there any size vivarium where aggression might be reasonably dispersed or is that principal on this forum to roundly say no never? Are there breeders on here who might have some special insight?

Thanks Beman for the thoughtful reply.
 
KamikaziChameleon said:
I agree with this 100% I guess my answer to him is the same as the company line. The OP is probably thinking can I do 2 chameleons long term in a 6 ft tank, NOPE!

Because of my generally idiosyncratic approach, I've made my own terrariums, and aquariums, and filtration over the last nearly 30 years. I've been pushing the boundaries of what is considered "acceptable" but excelling in health and in quality of husbandry since that habitat. That was a fluke, but it has informed many other endeavors to be much more successful. To give a general sense of my measure, if I can get the apex animals in a community or social setup to reproduce successfully, and particularly reliably, I'm succeeding. So by that standard the habitat was a failure clearly.

I do generally cringe at the herpetological Pokémon ethos that is prevalent in the hobby (and animal husbandry broadly.) To define that, I see it as the "what is the minimum requirements to keep this thing happy enough it lives past the median age." then filling a closet or room with as many tiny enclosures as possible. I bread Africans cichlids for about 3 years, and I had a very uncommon setup for that in my region (the Midwest.) The smallest spawning tank was 75 gallons, half were over 100 gallons, where most hobbyists used 20-40 gallons, I used 20-40 gallons aquariums for fry rearing or isolation tanks in special situations, typically breeders would use 5-10 gallons. The filtration was a 300 gallon sump system where the standard you'd see in the hobby was sponge filters. I stacked tanks with great social consideration that typically had 2-3 species spawning simultaneously, again something typically considered impossible or negligent, as spawning would beget aggression and loss of life by the rhetoric of the hobby.

Non of that is to disagree with the rule, not at all. Just to inform how I see the rule, and I ponder if I built a LXWXH 10'x4'x6' vivarium could I cohabitate any species of chameleon rationally? That's how idiosyncratic I am. Drives my wife crazy. If I did over 300 gallon vivarium as a child on a shoe string budget what could I execute on now.

So I guess that would be my question to this thread and forum, is there any size vivarium where aggression might be reasonably dispersed or is that principal on this forum to roundly say no never? Are there breeders on here who might have some special insight?

Thanks Beman for the thoughtful reply.
Click to expand...
My pleasure and I love the way you think about the animals in your care. I am a big believer in bigger is better when it comes to enclosures. My enclosure now is larger than the standard minimum requirement for a Veiled and it still is not large enough for me.

So hobby wide cohabiting is frowned on. So no one will recommend it due to the outcomes that come from it.

I have heard of some people that keep groups together. But with both of those situations they are all free ranged in large rooms with multiple places for the chameleons. I have seen this done with Mellers and Panthers. I have never heard of people doing it with Veileds. The person that does it with Mellers has a ton of experience and carefully monitors every aspect of their environment and the chams for signs of decline. The person that keeps the Panthers I do not know well. Just saw a post they did within a FB forum. They supposedly had been doing it for years and also had cham experience.

I think most people would discuss this privately just because of the yuck that can come with it lol. Plus there are just too many people that would get the wrong idea and shove chams in a 2x2x4 cage and call it good. Then get upset when one of the chams dies due to the situation it was forced into.

I do not know of any breeders that house groups together for the commonly breed species. All are kept individually caged. I do know with some of the smaller species like pygmy chams they can be successfully housed together but size of enclosure is a factor and I believe they never put two males in together. If I am remembering correctly it would be a 2 female to 1 male ratio. I could be wrong here though. This species is not one that I have experience with just have read about.
 
There shouldn’t be any reason to keep your chameleons together. It’s all for the human belief of a couple relationship. The only reason a veiled male or female would be together would be for breeding purposes. That means they would temporarily be near each other for the means of breeding IF they both accept that. You should never house them together, their might be stories of successfully doing this but it’s against their species they can’t run from each other in an enclosure so they corner each other and they get very stressed out/probably will fight. The belief of doing this actually harms the quality of life for the chameleon due to stress levels from this.
 
Housing multiple of chameleon like Veiled isn’t ideal.

You could get away if you want to dedicate an entire room for a monster enclosure. But even providing a monster enclosure is still uncertain.
 
Kodyf said:
There shouldn’t be any reason to keep your chameleons together. It’s all for the human belief of a couple relationship. The only reason a veiled male or female would be together would be for breeding purposes. That means they would temporarily be near each other for the means of breeding IF they both accept that. You should never house them together, their might be stories of successfully doing this but it’s against their species they can’t run from each other in an enclosure so they corner each other and they get very stressed out/probably will fight. The belief of doing this actually harms the quality of life for the chameleon due to stress levels from this.
Click to expand...
I think this has to do with balancing interests. Is it cruel to keep a chameleon in a tank by its self and not cruel to feed it other animals for our amusement or to satisfy our desire to have the chameleon? What makes a chameleon, or any predator any more valuable to keep than a prey animal? If animals live longer more productive lives in captivity does that mean that animals don't belong in the wild or outside of captivity?

I think the aquarium trade has really matured in this arena, of developing very high skilled keepers with very socially complex aquariums that achieve a decent balance of sustainability and enrichment.

Raptors (birds of prey) commonly have a 99% mortality rate their first year of life in the wild, and a 99% survivability in captivity. A gross minority make it to year two. Again this is a case against them existing in a natural ecosystem, because the measure of quality of life is survivability and longevity. We behave as if wild animals never encounter stress or danger relative to living in captivity... but the frank truth is that the likely experience many instances every day of extreme stress, and clearly they don't have appreciable survivability.

What if there was a balance, between the max life span, and general enrichment of the animal by introducing certain amounts of stress?
I strongly personally suspect "Max lifespan" is something of a false idol to animal husbandry. I've settled into a space where sustainability and enrichment are my goals. And this has me approach the space with a an acceptable level of risk assuming plans to mitigate or respond to things if they do not go as planned.

But yeah, circling around again to something I said in a prior post. Can I breed an animal is a good metric to aim for. Then experimenting around that space with the elasticity you've created. In aquarium keeping I often heard lots of platitudes about this or that, and found the proof of being right was spawning something successfully multiple times. "those water parameters will kill that animal!" I'm actually multiple generations into spawning this fish, turning 5 into 5,000... so not sure what they are talking about, inversely they commonly couldn't make a similar claim to legitimize their assertion. Establishing a population of genetically diverse endangered fish in your tank is a small lifetime achievement. But its kind of par for the course in that discipline over the last few decades. I think this could and arguably should be the standard we uphold people to in a hobby dealing in rare, exotic, at risk animals. Nature cares not if an animal lives forever if it never reproduces its genes are lost if it doesn't procreate.

How do animals procreate... commonly they encounter one another because they live proximally. They don't proactively hunt the other, how big is a chameleon's territory is I'm sure a great discussion, but it certainly overlaps, they clearly need to be aware of one another to find one another to procreate. Maybe as recommended above starting with a smaller species, setup some cameras, try using some dither animals to confuse things. I grew to suspect the frogs were a big part of the success of our veiled chameleons, they were not territorial but also not afraid of the chameleons at all, and not really aggressive, but had no issue with plopping down next to a chameleon, not that the chameleons enjoyed them, I think the frogs flourished while absorbing the ire of the chameleons, the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of dynamic between the chameleons, too bothered by these big blobs sling shotting all over the terrarium. So not knowing that this was a possibility at the time, I'm fairly certain our tree frogs were "obese." their gut was not proportionate to their face at all.

I'm not near executing on anything, but I imagine if I could assemble something between a 600-1200 gallon volume terrarium, pick a centerpiece animal (lets say carpet chameleon because this is the chameleon forum) to structure it around and then adjust variables what might be achievable. It's not a "room" as state above but its not tiny either.

I'm probably 6-18 months out from formally re-entering (have a home remodel going on in the space that the tanks will reside). Just trying to get the juices flowing. And I notice the general sentiment of this forum is shared across most of herpetology. But I think we will see that co-habs (whatever form it takes) will be the next improvement in this space. I'm old enough to remember when bio-active was considered horrible husbandry.

I'm very confused how one can observe animals in the wild and arrive at the conclusion (a closet full of Tupperware containers is what they really need.) And I am relieved to see broadly animal husbandry emerging from that trend.
 
So the moral of the story is young veiled chameleons that are raised in groups will be a beautiful pain in the ass
 
Breanna said:
I am new to the chameleon world and trying to get as much knowledge and research in before I bring one home, but my question is can you house a male and female together? I see a lot of people selling in pairs, so just wondering if i get a pair do I need separate cages for them?
Click to expand...
Sometimes I wonder if I should be allowed in my own house considering Spikes enclosure is also in there.

Jokes aside, like just about everyone else, I'd highly advise against it. These are very solidary creatures who seem to truly prefer being alone. Watching Spike while I'm at work for the past several months, and learning from his behavior, there are benefits to it.

Security being the biggest one. I believe Spike likes to go down to his "sleeping spot" early during the day because he likes to "secure" that spot before any other chameleons (even though there are no other chameleons in our home, this would be a natural instinct). He doesn't sleep. But he makes sure to get down there early afternoon while the lights are still on and just hang out. This could also have to do with humidity being higher/temps being lower at that location. But I personally believe that chameleons may partially do this to literally make sure they get their spot. He also constantly is licking branches to check if other chameleons have been around.

I think the breeders (and keepers with multiple chameleons) that clearly know what they're doing and have a ton of experience are right by keeping them separate. I've seen videos of them attacking each other (even when they're mates and it's time to breed!) and it's not a pretty sight. I personally would never want another chameleon to have the ability to harm Spike, so I would never risk it. Even when breeding chameleons, the videos I've seen, show the keepers being very careful, and ready to seperate them in case something goes wrong. With their knowledge and experience, that tells me personally all I need to know, that they should be kept separate.
 
Steve A said:
Sometimes I wonder if I should be allowed in my own house considering Spikes enclosure is also in there.

Jokes aside, like just about everyone else, I'd highly advise against it. These are very solidary creatures who seem to truly prefer being alone. Watching Spike while I'm at work for the past several months, and learning from his behavior, there are benefits to it.

Security being the biggest one. I believe Spike likes to go down to his "sleeping spot" early during the day because he likes to "secure" that spot before any other chameleons (even though there are no other chameleons in our home, this would be a natural instinct). He doesn't sleep. But he makes sure to get down there early afternoon while the lights are still on and just hang out. This could also have to do with humidity being higher/temps being lower at that location. But I personally believe that chameleons may partially do this to literally make sure they get their spot. He also constantly is licking branches to check if other chameleons have been around.

I think the breeders (and keepers with multiple chameleons) that clearly know what they're doing and have a ton of experience are right by keeping them separate. I've seen videos of them attacking each other (even when they're mates and it's time to breed!) and it's not a pretty sight. I personally would never want another chameleon to have the ability to harm Spike, so I would never risk it. Even when breeding chameleons, the videos I've seen, show the keepers being very careful, and ready to seperate them in case something goes wrong. With their knowledge and experience, that tells me personally all I need to know, that they should be kept separate.
Click to expand...
I’ve been bitten by an adult panther and it hurts but if I was as small as they are I can see how it could be a killer. It’s a big deal for them to be around others
 
You should DEFINITELY house the two chameleons separately. Sometimes, breeders might house a couple of chameleons together for a reptile show, but that does not mean that they are usually housed together. If you are trying to breed your chammies, you should still have separate cages. Great question!
 
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