High fat feeders for a sick cham

[lecko167]

I rescued a veiled last week from a pet store, and after a trip to the vet (diagnosed with a double eye infection) she is finally moving and keeping her eyes open, so that means she can now eat willingly!

I'm looking for some feeders that will help her heal and help her gain some weight as she is pretty skinny. She eats crickets right now, but I want to add variety.

Any ideas?

 

[raven1139]

Waxworms are high in fat, and superworms are good too and easy to find. They are like candy to them so feed sparingly!

 

[Andee]

Don't feed too many fatty ones as they have a tendency to get addicted to fatty feeders, butterworms are my fav high in fat feeder because they are also high in calcium.

 

[Olimpia]

It might be a good idea to look into a feeder like dubia roaches (or discoids, if you're in Florida). Don't let the name scare you - yes, they are roaches, but they don't climb smooth surfaces, fly, chirp, or smell, so they are a very low-maintenance feeder that you can have in a smooth plastic tote or something similar.

Roaches have a lot of meat on them compared to crickets, and they get even chunkier when they've had a full meal, so when trying to get a sick chameleon back to an ideal weight I usually pull from my roach colony much more than from crickets.

You can order a handful of them from most feeder websites and see how she likes them, perhaps?

 

[Andee]

I definitely agree with Olimpia on the roach thing. Getting some chams to eat them though is hard, my cham will eat anything that moves, what I do when feeding roaches is I put one on the screen and will see if the cham notices it, I have time to hand feed though.

 

[lecko167]

I use dubia with my Leos, but unfortunately they're illegal here in TN and they're very hard to get. I have a friend that breeds them and I plan to buy some appropriate sized ones for Priscilla next week. She has had wax worms, crickets, and meal worms. Luckily she eats anything that wiggles and moves! I hold the food for her and she eats it out of my hand, so I thought worms would be easier to hold and would also give her variety. Luckily she is improving and she will soon be able to catch her food.

Thanks for the advice guys!