Going on a trip

okiroo

okiroo

Avid Member
im leaveing around nov. or dec. for califonia(or a state nearby) for my sisters wedding. shes already married but joined the air force so she could be stationed with her also air force husband. anyways i would be gone for a week or so and my boyfriend want to come to the wedding aswell. how do ya'll go on vacation? i dont trust anyone to care for my animals while im gone. im buying a mistking so watering would be good but what about daily cleanup/ feeding/ humidifer changes? i live in the sticks with rednecks and people who dont really know anything about lizzards. i also dont trust people in my house. if i let the vet(i think they take boardings) care for my animals i fear they wuddnt eat from stress about being away from home and they also might not care for them the way i ask ect. i know this is ways away but i want things ready quickly.



a few more Q's that would really help me is

i plan on breeding my chams this summer. whats the gestation for a female hoe? i dont want her to give brith or clair to lay when im gone.

with a mistking would i have to have my cages lined up to mist them all? would i be able to hook up a cage across the room or would wires be everywhere?


any help would be gr8 becuz im already stressing about it.
 
I'm facing the same problem too. I don't know if I want to trust my friends with my cham. Makes me nervous since they know nothing...
 
mychamtini112012 said:
I'm facing the same problem too. I don't know if I want to trust my friends with my cham. Makes me nervous since they know nothing...
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ugh, silly boyfriend wont stay home and tend to them :rolleyes: he knows how to feed them and if i had the mist sytem up all he would have to do is feed and fill humidifer once a day. it wuddnt be that bad. but thats not happening


anyone with chams left for a week? how did you do it :confused:
 
i go away all the time in the summer, and i have a book that has each day of the week in it with the things that need to be done on that day, time of day and all. i usually get my bro to come stay at my house and he uses the book and does fine.
also if you have a misting system with a big enough resivior for a week than you could feed the chams really well the day you leave, say sunday, then monday, and teus no food, one real good feeding on wed with a few extra crickets and then thus no food, a feeding friday and no food sat, then you are home. meaning a newbir only has to feed your chams twice. you could skip suppliments that week and put the crickets into seperate bins one for each feeding day with enough food for them so that they are well gutloaded.
your cham will be fine for the few days without food and it wouldnt be that hard for someone todo.
and lights on a timer of course
just my idea
hoj

and i leave 10plus chams of 5 different species
 
Hoj said:
i go away all the time in the summer, and i have a book that has each day of the week in it with the things that need to be done on that day, time of day and all. i usually get my bro to come stay at my house and he uses the book and does fine.
also if you have a misting system with a big enough resivior for a week than you could feed the chams really well the day you leave, say sunday, then monday, and teus no food, one real good feeding on wed with a few extra crickets and then thus no food, a feeding friday and no food sat, then you are home. meaning a newbir only has to feed your chams twice. you could skip suppliments that week and put the crickets into seperate bins one for each feeding day with enough food for them so that they are well gutloaded.
your cham will be fine for the few days without food and it wouldnt be that hard for someone todo.
and lights on a timer of course
just my idea
hoj
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gr8 idea. thankyou so much!!!!
 
And on feeding, I have a cricket feeder with those poles going into the cricket keeper. dust in a red plastic cup, and then make a feeder out of a half gallon tank. There are a ton of tutorials on this forum on how to make one. That way the person doing the feeding doesn't have to actually touch the crickets. Keeper to pole to cup, to milk jug.
 
I do like Hoj, feed them up real good, and if its more than 2-3days I have someone come by and feed them. Its very stressfull though:eek: The mistking you can setup however you like. You would just have to run the tubing to wherever you wanted it. If you need to make long runs, they sell the same size/material tubing at lowes for garden sprinkler systems for cheap. The tubing for a MK makes a complete circuit. So if its a larg room or multiple rooms, you may wind up needing alot.:( It sounds like your going to have to find sombody trust worthy no matter what...
 
We go away all the time! We travel all over for show and sometimes just for vacation, a week is no biggie! don't even stress!

first of all, you need to start planning now so that your last clutch ov eggs will be in the incubator atleast a month before you leave, also remember that some chams double, triple or even quad clutch.

second, you want to make sure that youre eggs wont be due to hatch while you're gone (they can't be more than 5 month in the bator) goes back to planning out your season

now that we have breeding and eggs out of the way lets talk about the chams themselves.

make sure that all your lights and misters are on timers, set them up soon, so you can be postive that they work, and so that you can tweak times if needed.

measure to see how much water your mister uses over the period that youre gone and plan accordingly. i use a 55g fishtank as a resivour while we're gone.

you mentioned a humidifier, if you go w/ the fishank idea, drop in an aquarium heater, the warm water coupled w/ daily misting should keep it humid enough for the week that you're gone. if you're still worried about it, use a live plant and water it well before you leave.

For feeding, make feeding cups and start introducing them now, so that when you leave your chams know what and where they are. your feed cup should have holes on the bottom or be made out of screen so that i water drips in, you wont make roach soup.

i make gutload cookies, w/ a bit of fruit puree (babyfood os fine), some supplements, and gutload, mash them together until its solid like a cookie, then bake @200-250 for 20 mins, that will keep your cookie solid.

I've never done this w/ crickets and we use roaches as a staple, add as many roaches as you think your cham will eat in a week, plus a handful of extra for snacking.

In the few days before i leave, i pick up some butterworms and start feeding 4-5 a day just to help fatten them up incase they don't use the cup while we're gone, then when we get back i resume for the next 3-4 days.

i also throw in a handfull of bluebottle maggots on the day that we leave so that they'll turn into flies while we're gone.

as far as poop on the floor, i only clean cages once a week anyway

If you have babies setup before you leave, put an entire producind fruitfly culture in w/ them. poke 1 or 2 holes in the top and throw a stick in there, the fruit flies will keep comming up.

We go out of town 10-12 times a year, and using thins method, we rarely had problems. infact, the times we did have problems, where when people came by to try to help!

You have tons of time, so try to set it up soon and monitor everything, so that you have lots of thiem to make changes and modify it to suit you and your animals.
Have a wonderful trip, and don't stress out, it causes wrinkles!;)
 
I'm with the member above, I've left for a week and didn't worry about it much (I mean I do, but about the Mistking exploding or something lol). As long as the lights and water are on a timer, I feed well the few days before I go and then they diet while I'm gone. Mine are adults too, so usually they only get an insect or two a day. But they may get 6-7 instead for a couple days and then diet that week.

They do just fine. I've had people come in to take care of my pets before and it's just a pain. They never do a good enough job, even when you've shown them how to do stuff in person AND you've left a sheet of instructions.

I swear to God, one time I brought a friend of mine to take care of my Jackson's and geckos at the time. I ran through all the chores with him there in person, left him a few sheets with instructions, and then left a week later. I get a call two days into my trip saying "I'm afraid of everything. The reptiles, the insects, all of it." And I'm left thinking... what the hell? You tell me NOW? Ugh. So I don't bother any more if it's not my sister or boyfriend.
 
@ Olimpia: You say you feed your adults 1-2 insects per day? If I feed mine 5-8 bugs (assortment of crickets, dubias, silkies and supers) every other day does that mean I'm over-feeding??
 
Chester222 said:
@ Olimpia: You say you feed your adults 1-2 insects per day? If I feed mine 5-8 bugs (assortment of crickets, dubias, silkies and supers) every other day does that mean I'm over-feeding??
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Depends. My male is a year and a half old and fat, so he's on a diet. My other one is a female, so she's permanently on a diet to keep her from producing eggs. So this works for mine but it doesn't necessarily work for every animal. Some people prefer to do 5-6 insects every other day but I do 1-3 every day instead, in the end it's the same thing just spaced differently.

If you start to see that your chams are starting to look chubby then you may have to cut back a little. But if it's working for you then stick to it, that's not a problem I think.
 
Vacation

I have a reptile shop down the street. If I brought my cham in there, I know they would baby sit for a week $. What if you lost power or something and the mist king didnt turn on properly, you might lose your friends...
 
even in the wild, they go for periods of time w/o rain. making sure that they are properly cared for before you leave is key. we have had a power outage while we were gone, (and a friend was looking after the place, he didn't even notice that the lights and misters werent going off!) if its something youre going to loose sleep over, use a dripper, that way if there is an outage, it's just the lights
 
also taking them to the lfs could expose them to viruses and parasites. many LFS deal w/ WC animals and you don't know what kind of bugs they'll feed. might be those nasty virus loaded LFS crix and they probabaly dont gutload. if you must, you must, but if given those 2 choices, i would trust the idiot friend.
 
Going to a wedding myself in March for 4 days.. My boyfriend's mum will take care of Fender! She'll be the only person I trust to do so.. Only condition I have to move him to her place!:)
 
sounds right. thanks!

Olimpia said:
Depends. My male is a year and a half old and fat, so he's on a diet. My other one is a female, so she's permanently on a diet to keep her from producing eggs. So this works for mine but it doesn't necessarily work for every animal. Some people prefer to do 5-6 insects every other day but I do 1-3 every day instead, in the end it's the same thing just spaced differently.

If you start to see that your chams are starting to look chubby then you may have to cut back a little. But if it's working for you then stick to it, that's not a problem I think.
Click to expand...
 
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