HIGHLY considering purchasing Johnstonii pair.

[luckykarma]

Glad I read this thread. I've been emailing the seller who was honest in saying they're not for everyone and come "come in very wormy(round worms, nematodes, etc)".

I'm very interested but this thread have definitely given me pause. I take losing a cham too hard.

 

[laurie]

Glad I read this thread. I've been emailing the seller who was honest in saying they're not for everyone and come "come in very wormy(round worms, nematodes, etc)".

I'm very interested but this thread have definitely given me pause. I take losing a cham too hard.

I am like you, if I have questions on my ability to keep a type of cham, I will pass before I will lose one. I am a mess when I lose a cham.

 

[Eric Adrignola]

My friend Pete got a big shipment of them in the 90's. They all looked great except one badly bruised up female. Within a few weeks, she was all that remained. Everyone who got them in that time lost them quickly, dead with blood coming out the mouth. Pete did some pretty detailed necroscopies, and found that all died of the same thing. Some really big, really nasty worms in the lungs. They all had them, and all died from them.

Strange, as it did not seem to be a normal thing for a parasite to do. I suspect it was a side-effect from importation, not a normal thing at all.

 

[blackbetty]

Yikes!!!! Is there any repercussions? I know its buy at your own risk with WC, but wondered if anything came out of it? Any way to warn others?

 

[chamelisa]

I'm sorry this is a late reply but I never saw this thread before.

I bought a pair of johnstoni. The female laid eggs within a few days. Her condition was not great so I am a bit worried about the eggs/offspring. There were 9 eggs in her clutch.

The female had all sorts of parasites internal and external. She was treated and they were clearing up. She ate everything offered. She was fairly emaciated so she got a regular supply of feeders meaning she got as many as she would eat.

One morning there was a problem with her tongue and it was hanging out of her mouth. I took her to the vet as soon as I saw that. We couldn't find any obvious signs of trauma. We opted to amputate the tongue. She did not go on antibiotics that day which in looking back I wish she had. Couldn't have resulted in anything worse than what happened. She struggled for days and then finally died.

The male is good. He had a heavy load of parasites as well. The bumps on his skin were not as bad as the female. I'm guessing his parasite load wasn't as heavy. I need to do some follow-up fecals next week.

They are a very nice species but it's true, they aren't for everyone. The ordeal with the female left me feeling quite sick to my stomach. Such as the nature of working with WCs. But without WCs, how will we get anywhere? If I succeed in hatching out these johnstoni, they have to go to people working with the species. I just don't know who is working with them at this time.

 

[eisentrauti]

Hi,

there's an excellent article in german - do you understand it a bit ?

Best regards
Benny

 

[chamelisa]

Hi,

there's an excellent article in german - do you understand it a bit ?

Best regards
Benny

Not a bit, smarty pants! Translate it for me. Did you get my PM?

 

[eisentrauti]

No
I can write a small summary about the article but please give me some time. First I need to find it, I have nearly 200 terraristic magazines ;-)

 

[eisentrauti]

Found it
Here the most important point for the incubation:
Lower temperatures are better, 20°C maximum till 15°C at the night (the author incubated them in his normal montane chameleon room, without an incubator), with this method he gets 100% hatched juvenils which are bigger and more active than others. This way of incubation needs 50% more time than the standard method with temperatures over 20°C. 154 days instead of 114 days (22°C incubation) or 126 days (20°C incubation)
Temperatures round 24-25°C kill the embryos. Temperatures round 22°C let round 50% of the embryos die.
The author also write down the result of his measurements in the Ruwenzori Mountains. The temperatures there are in 20 cm deep soil between 18-20°C

The juvenils grow very fast and the females start at the age of 2 months ! with "raising" eggs. When the hatch they are between 75-90 mm long, the ones incubated with room temperature exen 5-7 mm longer !

The clutches from the author variegate between 14-21 eggs, but never more than 17 fertile eggs

I hope this helps a bit

 

[chamelisa]

Thank you very much! Everything I've read just makes me so nervous about their hatch rate. I'll take daily notes on the egg temps and post them when I'm done. So if I do it wrong, we know what the temps were. And if they come out right... then we know what the temps were. At least on this clutch.

Thanks again for the notes on that article.

 

[eisentrauti]

No prob. I write tomorrow more - it's too late for my brain at the moment

 

[ruscon]

chamelisa, i'm sorry but amputating the tongue was one of the stupidest things i've ever read on this forum. What kind of veterinarian was it? - A cattle vet? I would not use this person again. The tongue problem often takes care of itself after a few days if you just keep the animal in a warm container with damp paper towels on the bottom to keep it from drying out.

 

[Chris Anderson]

Ruscon,

I've had this go the other way and wondered if the vet and I hadn't decided to wait it out and try to save the tongue if the cham would have survived. We attempted to place the tongue back onto the entoglossal process and keep the cham in a recovery enclosure only to have the female swallow her tongue. We then pulled the tongue out and tried to once again reinsert the tongue on the entoglossus. The cham again swallowed her tongue and this time it self-amputated. In the end she did not recover, despite our bests efforts to save the tongue and let it heal itself. Obviously this won't always be the case but had she not had the additional stress of us trying to save the tongue and rather just the stress of recovery which she already had, it may have turned up differently. In the end, who really knows but I can see a vet going both ways on this issue, just depending on what the symptoms of the animal are.

Chris

 

[chamelisa]

My chameleon was choking on her tongue. I tried setting her tongue right. I have done this in the past with success. But after a couple of attempts, I realized she was only going to end up swallowing her tongue. She was already trying to bite it off. So I left it hanging out of her mouth (she had a carrier with damp paper towels) and went right to the vet. By the time we got there, she had swallowed it again.

 

[kinyonga]

Ruscon...how would you suggest you keep the tongue from being bitten off or just bitten when its hanging out of the mouth? How would you keep it moist so it wouldn't become necrotic while it was hanging out of the mouth? How would you get it not to swallow it (as Chris said happened)? Do you not think the stress of it trying to cope with its tongue hanging out is going to be overwhelming?

I've had a couple of WC's end up soon after I got them, with the tongue hanging out of the mouth and having been over-stretched had no hope of ever being able to heal and retract. The tongues were amputated. One did well without it and learned to eat easily. The tongue of the second one was amputated too long (too much left over at the end of they hyoid spike) and that little bit extra made it impossible for the chameleon to get used to it...it likely didn't sit right in the mouth and she didn't make it.

I have heard of several reports of WC chameleons being sold with no tongues that had been surviving like that in the wild.

I have to agree with Chris that the attempts to save the tongue are harder on the chameleon than learning to cope with living without it.

 

[reptimom]

idk if I'm ready for something like this yet, I may just wait until next years shipment, because I was also considering an oustaler pair from cham. Company, but it's still all just talk now.

Got one of Jim's (Chameleon Co.) Oustalets. He is awesome - eats like a pig. They are cb and very hardy and healthy. I don't think you could go wrong there.

 

[skyedog]

Got one of Jim's (Chameleon Co.) Oustalets. He is awesome - eats like a pig. They are cb and very hardy and healthy. I don't think you could go wrong there.

I second that. I also got one of the Oustalets from Jim at The Chameleon Company. He's an eating machine. I'm so glad I got him. He'll be 8 months old next week.

 

[summoner12]

Can't save them all.

chamelisa, i'm sorry but amputating the tongue was one of the stupidest things i've ever read on this forum. What kind of veterinarian was it? - A cattle vet? I would not use this person again. The tongue problem often takes care of itself after a few days if you just keep the animal in a warm container with damp paper towels on the bottom to keep it from drying out.

I think we need Juli to post so this member can see the last bit of her Sig.

 

[ruscon]

My comment was directed at the veterinarian and not so much the owner. I have dealt with this problem and what worked for me was keeping the animal in a 1 by 1 plastic box with a low perch and bottom covered with wet paper towels so its tongue would not dry out. If the animal is in danger of bitting its tongue you can cut 2 small pieces of packing foam and partially jam its mouth open and secure it with some thin strips of medical tape wrapped around its muzzle. Keep the box dark to minimize activity and warm to help the process. It worked for me with a friend's melleri. After 1 and a half days it had pulled its tongue back in. I admit it looked terrible and beyond help at first, but it recovered. And from what i have read, they usually do.
Maybe i over reacted, but a veterinarian should try to do something better- especially with what they charge you.

 

[ruscon]

And as far as the stress- a few days in a dark warm box is minimal compared to the removal of a major organ. It opens up an already compromised immune system to tremendous trama and infection possibilities.
I say try to save it before just removing it.