Care of Female Veiled

[jajeanpierre]

I put this in the "Health Clinic" section because it is a health issue, but maybe it better belongs in the "General Discussion" section or maybe even "Chameleon Breeding ."

I had no idea....

My female veiled is about three/four months old. I've owned her all of two weeks. Up until I read a couple of articles Jnnb recommended, my goal had been to feed her as much as possible, get the heat up during the day and give her lots and lots of light, especially natural sunlight.

It looks like I need to rethink how I care for her to try to discourage her from cycling and laying eggs.

I read this article by Lynda Horgan that Jnnb recommended:

http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.com/2007/12/keeping-female-veiled.html

Both this article and Jnnb's own article "Info for New Keepers of Young Veiled or Panther Chameleons (https://www.chameleonforums.com/blo...-keepers-young-veiled-panther-chameleons.html) recommend against ever giving a female a basking light.

I have a really dumb question--what is a basking light and what does it do for/give to my chameleon?

In both articles, it seems that reducing light, heat and food will help prevent a chameleon cycling.

I have a variety of lights over my cage: Reptisun 5.0, 60w Daylight Blue Reptile Bulb (Zoo Med) and a couple of infrared spot lights to increase the heat. All lights are turned off at night and temps drop to mid to low 60s.

In the summer, my house is kept at a constant 78, so I won't be able to get much temperature drop at all.

I am a real believer in natural sunlight so had planned to have her out basking in the warm Texas sun as much as possible. I've lived in Saudi Arabia and have traveled through the veiled's range. I wanted to replicate that as much as I could. Maybe I need to rethink that.

I do have some experience with manipulating ovulation with lights having bred Thoroughbred race horses and owning chickens. Length of day is the trigger that starts a horse or chicken ovulating. That is not the trigger for my four sexually mature female parrots who have never laid an egg.

Both the parrots and the chameleons come from areas where sunlight is pretty much 12 hours a day regardless of the month. My parrots come from areas where seasons are divided into wet or dry seasons, not the winter/spring/summer/fall we have. The veiled chameleon will have a cooler winter, but the daylight is pretty much even. The veiled on the coastal plains of Saudi Arabia or Yemen will not have much of a cooler winter. The Red Sea is a very hot sea (a lot of volcanic activity under the surface) and doesn't cool off. Chickens originate from India, which is also tropical with the day length being pretty even all year round.

Does daylight length stimulate chameleons to ovulate?

Should I be turning off or reducing the use of the 60w Daylight Blue Reptile Bulb which the package says provides UVA and heat? Can I get her out in the sunlight for an hour or so in the summer without stimulating her reproductive cycle?

I would appreciate any advice. If possible, I would like to prevent her from ever ovulating.

 

[jannb]

A basking light is a heat light. In my blog I believe I said a female may never need a basking light. I live in south Florida where it's pretty much warm year round and I am able to keep a females temps in the low 80's without using a basking light, just the UVB and plant light keeps their temps in the lower 80's when they are in the tops of their trees. If you are in a cooler climate you may very well need a basking light to keep your girl in the lower 80's. She will need to be in the lower 80's to be able to digest her food. At night we turn our AC down lower so I am able to give them a 10 degree drop in temps. The most important thing with heat is to have a good digital temp gun to make sure their temps are correct.

I saw the pictures of your girl and she is still small. I would not cut back on her food yet.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Thanks Jnnb. I've dealt with egg-bound chickens, and their long-term prognosis is not good even if you can resolve the immediate crisis.

At what age/size do you start cutting back? I really don't know how old she is. She was housed with another female veiled that was probably the same age but smaller. (My girl was the more outgoing so I am sure got most of the food.)

Her body is about 3 3/4 inches long and she weighed 34g this morning, of which I bet a gram or so is that lump of potting soil I saw her wolf down. She had been gaining a gram a day until I stressed her last weekend. I think she's back to feeling happy again.

Her pictures are a bit deceiving in that she is puffed up a bit on the scale. She isn't thin, though.

I guess there probably is no magic answer to my questions. I'll read again your blog posts and read everything on Lynda Horgan's blog.

Thanks so much for your patience and help. It must be tiring to have to answer the same questions over and over again.

 

[kinyonga]

You said "it seems that reducing light, heat and food will prevent cycling"...i live in Canada so the light outside is reduced in the winter...however I still keep the veileds on a twelve hours on twelve hours off cycle. In the cool weather here their cage temperatures naturally reduces and I keep the basking area in the low 80's F but in the summer sometimes it goes a little over that for a few days here and there. I do keep the female's on a "diet" and keep the temperatures lower than the male's to slow their metabolism slightly to help them be less hungry as described in my article
http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.ca/2007/12/keeping-female-veiled.html

There is a little more to it than that (and this is my "theory" from my experiences, not something that I have ever found to have been proven by a scientific study). I have found that if I feed the females well for a couple of days after they produce eggs and then put them on the "diet" they will either produce a small clutch or no clutch at all depending on the "diet". It's my feeling that this stops them from producing follicles that ovulate or keeping the number of follicles low. I have done this for many years and the female veileds live to be at least six years old but more often seven years old. I do not starved them but I definitely don't overfeed them.

The diet can be started when they are sexually mature/full grown but it's harder to determine when this is if you don't know the chameleon's well.

For lights on the cage, I use a Repti - sun 5.0 uvb fluorescent long linear tube and a regular incandescent household bulb of a wattage that provides the right basking get temperature.

Constantly overfeeding a female veiled almost always leads to reproductive issues, prolapses and even MBD so I am careful to not overfeed even the babies.

Hope this helps,
Lynda Horgan