Gout in Male Jackson’s Chameleon

[Mr.Bryd]

Hello everyone,

Back at the beginning of March I noticed some swelling in the rear legs of my Jackson’s chameleon. At that time I stopped all supplementation to see if the swelling was due to over supplementing him since he is a montane species. I have kept an eye on him since then and up until this past week the swelling had not progressed and he was still using his back legs fine, as well as eating and drinking normally. This week I noticed that the swelling has gotten much worse and he now has a lump on one of his front feet. I believe he has developed gout. Unfortunately I can not get him into a vet right now due to the pandemic.

I am feeding gut loaded Dubias and crickets. I feed them a variety of mustard greens, carrots, cucumbers, and apples with the veggies dusted in bee pollen.

lighting is Arcadia t5 6% put a new bulb in the fixture in January.

Was supplementing with calcium w/o d3 twice weekly. Giving reptivite once a month.

temps remain in the high 70’s to veryyyy low 80s

humidity is around 40 to 45 percent daily with a nighttime digger that sets levels around 70 percent

2x2x4 bioactive cage

I feel like I have my husbandry pretty dialed in but feel free to make any suggestions. I can not seem to identify what is causing the progression of this. I am purchasing feeders from my local reptile store and am wondering if something they are feeding there colonies is causing an excess of protein in there bodies? Both my male panthers are fine but it could be due to there high metabolism.

 

[jamest0o0]

A secret amongst many roach dealers is that they use dogfood which is very high in protein to feed colonies. This helps the roaches grow faster/reproduce faster which helps them have larger colonies to sell. Unfortunately this also leads to very high levels of uric acid going into your chameleon when they eat them. Not saying this is for certain, but seems to be a link with gout and roaches fed high protein diets.

 

[Mr.Bryd]

A secret amongst many roach dealers is that they use dogfood which is very high in protein to feed colonies. This helps the roaches grow faster/reproduce faster which helps them have larger colonies to sell. Unfortunately this also leads to very high levels of uric acid going into your chameleon when they eat them. Not saying this is for certain, but seems to be a link with gout and roaches fed high protein diets.

This is what I feared, I have been working to establish my own roach colony to avoid this was hoping to get a generation or two in to the colony before I started feeding them off to my chams.

 

[jamest0o0]

Sorry this is going on, seems like you're doing everything right. Starting your own colony is definitely the way to go