how do you get a breeder quality Cham

[aplazbarr]

hi yall,

I was wondering if breeders breed for the best combination possible or do they refrain when breeding for babies for sale the public.

because what would prevent an indivdual from starting their own business using the lines of previous breeders, also producing beautiful Chams.

 

[Will Hayward]

Breeders tend to keep the offspring that they produce, that are the best of the group. These are called "holdbacks". Sometimes several indiviudal holdbacks will be chosen, and kept until their colour grows in nicer. At this time the breeder would decide to keep one, some, all or none. If they are kept they would likely become breeders, if not they would be sold at slightly higher prices for being not only larger and older, but also picks of the litter.

What prevents individuals from starting their own business is certainly not acquiring beautiful bloodlines...

 

[pohchunyee]

I agree with Will. However, ones have to consider, when he/she breed a chameleon for sale, customers will ask for the picture of the Sire. In order to fetch a good price, he would need to produce a picture of the sire that will attract others attention.

Of course breeder will breed the best looking one and holdback some chameleon to see how the babies will turn out to look like. Is like a Russian Roullette. You don't know what will turn out most of the time. For example, Veiled and Panther Chameleon. The female usually is pretty bland and not as colourful as the male (Female Veiled gets a little bit more colourful). I breed my Yellow burst Veiled Chameleon was breed with a female. The female died after complication of laying eggs. I hatched 30 babies and holdback the biggest male. I ended up with a Powder Blue Veiled baby (which is an adult now).... Check out my thread
https://www.chameleonforums.com/niji-jr-breeder-blue-7114/

A lot of breeder do sell top quality babies to the public (not all... seen someone sell MBD chameleon of Fauna CLassified before and calling the Veiled Chameleon "great Looking")... They know, in order for the customer to breed the babies...it would takes at least a year + 6 - 10 months of eggs incubating + survival rate of the babies when they hatched.... it is hard for someone to compete with large scale breeder. Since it takes at least 2-3 years to try and error to bear fruitful income!

 

[aplazbarr]

who would you say tends to have the healthiest and best clored Chams.

 

[Will Hayward]

For colouration, you're going to have to shop around and find what appeals to you the most. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Most have high health standars, few breeders that are well known, would sell an unhealthy chameleon. Afterall that is how they acheived their reputation.