Chameleons and Beta Carotene

ajs

Avid Member
I was listening to a somewhat recent podcast on chameleon academy about vitamins wrt chameleons.

In the episode, Dr. Rob Coke describes that chameleons probably do not have a great ability to convert beta carotene into physiological vitamin A that they can utilize. This surprised me, and I wished the episode would've gone further into that (If I missed something and this was elaborated on, please let me know).

A lot of products have beta carotene as their vitamin A supply, right? I'm pretty sure the reptivite that I use does.

What are your thoughts on this? Do the chameleons get enough through their gutloaded insects? Is this why Bill uses the Earth Pro A supplement with repashy loD?
 
Idt there is a for sure answer on this, but some of us here add preformed vitamin a(retinol) into our cham's diet. Usually with reptivite or adding a drop from a retinol soft gel onto a feeder about once a month. Some will even feed larger chams a mouse or other vertebrate. I believe it is speculated that chams probably get their vitamin A from flies and beetles that may have been feeding on rotten/dead things. For larger species(parsonii/melleri/oustaleti/etc), they are known to grab other lizards and even birds in the wild.
 
It has never been completely proven that any species of chameleon can convert it..nor has it been proven completely that any can't.

I have kept chameleons for many years and I do not give veiled or Panther chameleons any preformed vitamin A.

I feed/gutload the insects long enough before feeding them to the chameleons that whatever food they had in their stomachs when I got them is gone...so the insects have whatever little bits of vitamin A in them that they get from greens and veggies and a bit of fruit.
I don't feed any mice pups or other sources of "meat" to the chameleons either. My female veileds, for instance, live usually for 7 years and the males even longer.

This is just my experience with it.
I've been working on finding out the vitamin A conversion truth for years and cant find absolute proof yet...but I do know it has an involvement with the D3 when you're trying to attain a balance.
 
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