Sorry for the delay…had a lot of stuff to accomplish.
Thank you! She is a bit of an odd ball because she is pretty friendly with me, my sweet girl. Whenever I open her cage she is always reaching for me to do a little crawl before going back inside.
Enjoy her sweetness as it may change as she becomes a bit older.
I will attach a picture below of her enclosure. The only fake plants she has are thin vines that run along the backside so she has something else to grab while she’s scaling the screen. The black wire has since been moved to be zip tied against the screen so it’s not in her way.
You want to avoid attaching anything to the actual screen since it can rip so easily. I suggest using one of the many other ways to attach things which all involve using the frame to hold the weight. There are Dragon Ledges https://dragonstrand.com/dragon-ledges/ which are even better than sliced bread! For those enclosures that I lacked Dragon Ledges for I’ve used a couple of other methods. Garden trellis works quite well. I used fine wire to attach it to the frame. I drilled some small holes in the trellis where I needed for attachments. In retrospect, I should have drilled some tiny holes in the frame for attachment or even used the screws that hold everything together. My trellis on one has tried to slide down. I do have some light plants being supported by it. Another enclosure I attached slightly bent branches to the frame corners and was able to attach branches and vines to those. It was a smaller enclosure or I would have put a branch between the corners in an ‘H’ shape.
She does eat her money tree and the other vegetation in her cage but I’ve never seen her try to eat any of the wood or vines.
That’s pretty typical for veiled girls. Does she have a pothos? Those are always favorite plants to nibble. She does not eat the plant on the bottom right and it’s definitely sharper than it looks but it is very flimsy in person.
Corn plant leaves are too tough to eat.
She has a misting system that goes every 4 hours for about 15 seconds.
This needs some adjusting. You want to mist less often, but for longer periods. The best times to mist are right before lights go on and off, for at least 2 minutes. If needed, you can add a 1 minute mid day misting or a 15-20 minute dripper at mid day. The enclosure needs time to dry out.
Temperature is about 88° for basking
This is much too hot. We keep our ladies at no higher than 80, which helps keep their metabolism on the slower side of normal and I keep my room warmer during the day and a bit colder at night (doesn’t get below 60°)
It’s fine if your room does get a little below 60…veileds are pretty hardy with cooler temps. If you are having consistent night temps below 68, you can run a cool mist humidifier and boost humidity all the way at night. This simulates natural hydration gotten thru fog in the wild.
She only gets a super worm once every other week but I wanted to included everything just to be safe- crickets are definitely her favorite since she likes the hunt.
It was only after I started giving my chams superworms that two of them developed mouth rot (aka stomatitis). I’ve no way of knowing for sure what caused it for each, but I strongly suspected the superworms. That was the only thing that had changed for them. I still give an occasional superworm, but only maybe one a month or less and I try to give the soft freshly molted white ones. Superworms can bite back. So can hornworms. There are better treats and much better staple feeders to add. Variety is best. I try to keep a few different staple feeders to rotate. I always have roaches and crickets and will rotate giving those with things like silkworms or bsfl. A lot of people have been feeding grasshoppers, which are available from https://feedmychameleon.com/ For treats, wax worms are nice and soft and like candy to just about every reptile. I like to let my bsfl pupate into flies and give my chams some hunting fun with them.
Just as important as what you feed to your pretty girl, is what you feed to the feeders. The orange and other colored jelly cubes and pots are only good for hydration. Fresh produce is usually the best to feed your bugs. You don’t have to gutload (most don’t I think). Just keep your bugs well fed and they’ll be healthy and therefore, more nutritious.
Right now since your girl is expecting eggs soon, just keep feeding her what you normally do. After she’s laid her eggs, feed her very well for a couple of days. Then you are going to start her on a diet, or food regimen, that will decrease the number of eggs that she produces, hopefully the frequency that she produces/lays eggs and possibly will even stop all egg production/laying. 52 eggs is a tremendous amount. The more eggs she produces, the higher her risks for complications in laying them, such as egg binding, retention, etc - plus the stress of it shortens their lives. Anyhow, after she lays her eggs you want to get her started on 3-4 feeders, 3 days a week plus treats. I always feel bad and give the treat on the weekend when they aren’t fed. It may take a cycle or two for the diet to fully kick in. She may get receptive a few times but never lay eggs. That’s what my veiled girls did. You still want to keep a lay bin in her enclosure, but hopefully she’ll never need it.
If the vegetables (romaine lettuce and carrots mostly) are doing more harm than good I will absolutely stop.
It’s not really that they are doing any harm that I’m aware of, but they aren’t doing any good either. It’s much better to give the produce to her feeders and just give her some clean safe plants to nibble when she feels like it. Even though veileds nibble their plants (for reasons we don’t really know), they lack the ability to digest plant matter.
Her last clutch was in June and she had 52 eggs, I hope this helps!
I do move her basking light throughout the cage as I like to rearrange it about once a month (using the same plants and everything) just to keep it interesting for her. If this is something that causes her stress I will stop, but she hasn’t shown and displeasure from what I have seen.
Generally chameleons dislike change. I would say to get it set up in a way that works well and leave it that way. The only changes I make is replacing plants when they need it.
What supplements are you using? How often for each?
Thank you again!
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I’m just always a mother hen about our pretty ladies because of the egg laying.
we are glad to have you guys here. You are in great hands with missskittles. She helped me when I first started
