Hi,
Being a new Veiled Chameleon owner, I have a few question if I may. I got my baby cham on the 16th of August and have been building his enclosure and reading, reading, reading, ever since. If there is one thing I know now that I didn't when I first got him is that for every question, there are many answers. Most of the information that I found when I first got started, seems to be contradicted by one person or another if you search enough, which leads me to believe there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat.
Now that I have my enclosure almost finished, (Thanks to the help from people on this forum) I wanted to concentrate a bit on his feeding. The information I started with suggested cup feeding crickets in a transparent container, which I did. The only thing I did different was to craft a basket for the glass feeder jar out of some para-cord so it could become a claimable surface for him as well. To my dismay, I found him trying to eat the crickets "through" the glass which wasn't working out for him very well. (Did I end up with a short bus chammy I thought??) I decided to give him a day or two to try and work it out on his own and was pleased to find that he did. I use a second glass jar to transfer crickets from the basement that is just a bit smaller in diameter than the feeder jar so when I put them in his jar, I basically pour them in, upturning the jar in the process and then rattle it to get any that are sticking to the bottom of the transfer jar. I believe this is the signal that he uses to know that the food is ready as it takes no longer than a couple of minutes until all the crickets are gone.
As this system has been working well for me now for many weeks, I'm not really inclined to change it, but in my research have run across claims that transparent feeder jars might be bad for their tongues by them misjudging distances and that they might not be getting full extension if only ever fed by jars/cups. Is this really a serious concern I should be worried about and has there been others that have exclusively fed by jar for the duration of a chameleons life without any troubles? I would consider allowing his food to roam after I build his adult cage, but it really isn't feasible with the cage I'm using now without having a portion escaping into the house.
Thoughts?
The other question I had was concerning capturing crickets from their habitat. I have tried many methods so far, but feel there must be some better ways that people might have come up with. I have tried toilet paper tubes, tweezers, fish nets, capped funnel, and none of the above have worked out well on a consistent basis. When I had an abundance of crickets, I would pick up one of the egg cartons from the cage and bang it over my jar so the pile that is up inside one of the inverted cones fall into my jar. Unfortunately even this is no longer feasible now that I know how to gut load properly. Now that I'm putting the next days crickets into a seperate habitat to gut load load them for 24 hours, I'm back to dealing with a small amount of crickets at a time and really want to find and easier way to manipulate them. Any help would be appreciated.
Eidolen
Here is a picture of my jar. More pictures can be found here
Being a new Veiled Chameleon owner, I have a few question if I may. I got my baby cham on the 16th of August and have been building his enclosure and reading, reading, reading, ever since. If there is one thing I know now that I didn't when I first got him is that for every question, there are many answers. Most of the information that I found when I first got started, seems to be contradicted by one person or another if you search enough, which leads me to believe there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat.
Now that I have my enclosure almost finished, (Thanks to the help from people on this forum) I wanted to concentrate a bit on his feeding. The information I started with suggested cup feeding crickets in a transparent container, which I did. The only thing I did different was to craft a basket for the glass feeder jar out of some para-cord so it could become a claimable surface for him as well. To my dismay, I found him trying to eat the crickets "through" the glass which wasn't working out for him very well. (Did I end up with a short bus chammy I thought??) I decided to give him a day or two to try and work it out on his own and was pleased to find that he did. I use a second glass jar to transfer crickets from the basement that is just a bit smaller in diameter than the feeder jar so when I put them in his jar, I basically pour them in, upturning the jar in the process and then rattle it to get any that are sticking to the bottom of the transfer jar. I believe this is the signal that he uses to know that the food is ready as it takes no longer than a couple of minutes until all the crickets are gone.
As this system has been working well for me now for many weeks, I'm not really inclined to change it, but in my research have run across claims that transparent feeder jars might be bad for their tongues by them misjudging distances and that they might not be getting full extension if only ever fed by jars/cups. Is this really a serious concern I should be worried about and has there been others that have exclusively fed by jar for the duration of a chameleons life without any troubles? I would consider allowing his food to roam after I build his adult cage, but it really isn't feasible with the cage I'm using now without having a portion escaping into the house.
Thoughts?
The other question I had was concerning capturing crickets from their habitat. I have tried many methods so far, but feel there must be some better ways that people might have come up with. I have tried toilet paper tubes, tweezers, fish nets, capped funnel, and none of the above have worked out well on a consistent basis. When I had an abundance of crickets, I would pick up one of the egg cartons from the cage and bang it over my jar so the pile that is up inside one of the inverted cones fall into my jar. Unfortunately even this is no longer feasible now that I know how to gut load properly. Now that I'm putting the next days crickets into a seperate habitat to gut load load them for 24 hours, I'm back to dealing with a small amount of crickets at a time and really want to find and easier way to manipulate them. Any help would be appreciated.
Eidolen
Here is a picture of my jar. More pictures can be found here
