How important is feeder variety?

[GlennFrog]

So I just got a new baby female veiled chameleon and I was wondering about different feeders. What are the benefits of feeder variety? I only have crickets at the moment, but I've been looking into different types of worms (meal, wax, phoenix, etc) and mantids. The mantis option seems like it would be interesting, assuming I can find the space for them. Also, I've read that different types of roaches make excellent feeders, but I don't think that they are a viable option for me, considering my sister would have a major heart attack as soon as she saw them. Also, when, if ever, should I introduce veggies to her diet? I've read conflicting information, ranging from "veggies should be a staple" to "veggies are unnecessary." Any help and info is greatly appreciated.

 

[Masked Gecko]

You can offer your veiled veggies but it shouldnt try to replace insects with them. Variety is a good way for your reptile to get natural supplements, there are many different types of feeders besides roaches too. Also wax worms are really fatty, use them as a treat.

 

[kwengkynator]

Crickets are a good start but they arent really the best ones for me. The upkeep is high and the noise plus clean up. It wont be much now since you still have a baby cham. Once your cham gets bigger and requires a bigger set of crickets thats when the issues build up. They tend to be noise (not big deal) but the smell can be dreadful. The clean up too.

I highly recommend dubia roaches. They are better feeders in every way. Quiet, easy to feed and breed (where do you live, temp issues are main concerns but easily fixed) and DOESNT SMELL! You barely even notice they are there. I keep mine inside the closet and only have them out when its feeding time. She wont even notice them. Unless you prank her with it!

Also super worms are a good second feeder choice. Cheap, easy to handle and breeding is straight forward just requires time. They can be available at your pet shops. Roaches can be bought online. Start off from there. Some crickets and start building your dubia and super worm colonies. Also i recommend reptiworms (pheonix worms) online. Dont buy the repti worms in bulk they can only last so long. I bought too much one time and most was wasted. Too bad I couldnt breed them.

 

[GlennFrog]

Yeah, I definitely can't do any type of roaches. Just knowing they were in the house would keep her up at night, and pranking her with them would be a good way to get myself killed. She has a serious phobia of roaches; just saying the word when I asked about them was getting her freaked out, so roaches are definitely a no-go. After doing some more research, mantises are likely to require more space than I can allocate, so it looks like I'll be sticking with crickets and worms. I live in Southern California, so I don't think that temps would be a problem as far as breeding feeders is concerned. Is breeding feeders worth the work required, though? Is the cost that much lower that it becomes cost-effective to breed your own feeders?

 

[nick barta]

In response to your original question, variety is important, but not a science. As keepers, the goal is to replicate what the chameleon would experience in the wild; temperature ranges, humidity, light cycles, hydration, territory, climbing surfaces, breeding opportunities, and food sources.
Admittedly, we all probably don't replicate all of these, as some keepers don't breed the chameleon, and most keepers don't provide the size of a territory that most chameleons roam in the wild (although a free-range room is impressive!!).

With food we have some limitations, as we don't know what type of insects they are eating in each area they live in, but it is safe to say they definitely eat what insects they find.

That being said, it is reasonable that the research done on farmed insects for the reptile trade is applicable to chameleons. Farmed insects include crickets, super worms, meal worms, wax worms, black soldier fly larvae, housefly larvae, blue & green bottle fly larvae, and locust(locust in England).

Insects not farmed in large farm quantities, but still in the reptile food trade are springtails, isopods, aphids, rice flour beetles, bean beetles, cockroaches, horn worms, silkworms, stick insects, mantis, moths and butterflies.

In the 1990's we knew very little about chameleon nutrition, and we are miles ahead today on our understanding of vitamin A, Calcium, and Calcium/Phosphorus ratios. Even so, I fall back on the shotgun approach to feeding; If I can offer variety, I have a better chance of meeting a vitamin/calcium/protein need than 1 or 2 feeders could offer. I will probably never know what food or combination of foods were beneficial; as long as the chameleon is healthy my feeding program is working!

Your real source for food questions are the blogs by Sandrachamelon (look her up on the members list). We are fortunate to have someone with the depth she has on nutrition, check her blogs and threads out!

CHEERS!

Nick

 

[mvad]

I also highly recommend dubia roaches my veiled absolutely loves them. Small roaches are not scary looking at all. Tell your sister they are beetles (that's what I told my wife and she bought it). Reptile expos are also a great place to get feeders.

 

[GlennFrog]

Thanks for the help everyone. I feel like I have a better grasp of all this now. Any particular suggestions aside from roaches? There's really no way I could get away with having roaches in the house. If I got caught, my sister would have my head. Are there any worms that have a better track record than others?

 

[Chase]

Thanks for the help everyone. I feel like I have a better grasp of all this now. Any particular suggestions aside from roaches? There's really no way I could get away with having roaches in the house. If I got caught, my sister would have my head. Are there any worms that have a better track record than others?

Track record as in breeding ease?

Honestly, I've always used crickets and superworms as my feeders (for adults), well ones I've bought. Another thing that many do is go out to a field and collect grasshoppers. The only problem is that you'll need to make sure you're not close to anywhere where they could have come into contact with pesticides.

Be careful giving a specific feeder too often because they might get addicted! My quads got addicted to the grasshoppers and it took quite a while to ween them off of them.

Also another feeder that is often used are stick bugs, I don't have experience with them, but I know there are some people who use them often.

Chase

 

[kwengkynator]

Since roaches are a big no no. I recommend super worms and meal worms. Make those 2 as your staple. Also purchase some silk worms and horn worms for treats every now and then. I also recommend wax worms if you want them to gain a few grams. They are nothing but fat treats so use sparingly. Work on building your worms as a staple. AND yes, breeding them is better. You can maintain the knowledge of knowing that they are safe and they are much more convenient. The nutrition for gutloading is also a factor you control and know. You dont have to travel often to a pet shop to get one and also cheaper in the long run. My supers just eat wheat/oats bedding mix and some carrots. The initial cost for buying in bulk may be expensive but in the long run its worth it!

About mantises, I'm currently trying my first batch. I got a few egg cases online and about more than 200+ hatched from it. Knowing that I can't sustain all of them I left them in a plastic bin and left a few cotton balls soaked with water. Its been 5 days since they hatched and around 25% have fallen to cannibalism. I think I'll keep around half and feed them my small roaches and keep them until they have enough nutritional value to be fed to my chams. So they are tedious to breed. Requires a specific feeder to feed this feeder and requires a good amount of space. Separate housing takes up lots of space.

If you plan to keep them as feeders I recommend looking for houseflies to feed the young roaches. Since you dont have any small roaches to start them on. if you ask me I would just stick to the super and meal worms. Buy a small amount of cricket every now and then and treat them on horn worms and silk worms every 2 months or so.

 

[Chase]

Since roaches are a big no no. I recommend super worms and meal worms. Make those 2 as your staple.

I would not recommend these being the staple. They both have a high level of chitin in their shell and can be hard to digest.

Personally, I'd use crickets as the staple, with everything else as a variety. Ghann's (only supplier I know of that has these because I looked last night at their website) has banded crickets, and they don't get as big, have smaller wings, apparently don't smell as bad as the normal house crickets used by a majority of people.

Chase

 

[fluxlizard]

Since roaches are a big no no. I recommend super worms and meal worms. Make those 2 as your staple.

I would not recommend these being the staple.

I would not either- although not for exactly the same reasoning. I would use either or both alongside something else. When I think of a staple I think of something as the greatest bulk of the diet. For this, you are really best going with crickets, a species of roach, locusts, or maybe silkworms. Then adding something like supers or mealworms in for variety, in amounts that keep the crickets or whatever staple as the bulk.

I'm not a super or mealworm hater- I breed and feed both, and am constantly on here advocating the value of mealworms as they get an undeservedly bad rap IMO. But other insects are better as the staple.

Superworms sometimes also can be addicting for chameleons, and sometimes after being given supers only for a while, chameleons will stop feeding altogether. Which is another reason these can be a poor staple. If limited to once every several feedings, this is not a problem.

My philosophy is similar to Nick's- I try to offer as much variety as I reasonably can. I have seen several papers on what wild chameleon's eat that have been published in scientific journals, and nearly all have reported pretty much say the same things- bees and wasps mostly, then flies, then locusts and then misc other things. Most of us can't feed like that, so I offer variety.

All that said, I was watching this thread to see what other experienced keepers reported with interest, and would be interested in larger operations solutions to feeding. I think it is possible to use good nutrition for the insects and use very limited numbers of species. Gary Ferguson, for example, reported that he used only crickets and mealworms to feed his panther chameleons in his laboratory research successfully over several generations...

 

[kwengkynator]

Yeah... Listen to those two. They have more knowledge and experience compared to mine. Check and balance at play folks. I'm just really blinded by my bad experience with crickets that I would choose not to go back to them as feeders. Although I admit that I do purchase an occasional batch of 20-30 for variety.

 

[Chase]

Yeah... Listen to those two. They have more knowledge and experience compared to mine. Check and balance at play folks. I'm just really blinded by my bad experience with crickets that I would choose not to go back to them as feeders. Although I admit that I do purchase an occasional batch of 20-30 for variety.

I don't want you to think you gave bad advice. The beauty of keeping thesw animals is the that there is not one set method of keeping them. Personally, I have not had good results with feeding supers as a staple, and prefer crickets.

Chase

 

[Chase]

Yeah... Listen to those two. They have more knowledge and experience compared to mine. Check and balance at play folks. I'm just really blinded by my bad experience with crickets that I would choose not to go back to them as feeders. Although I admit that I do purchase an occasional batch of 20-30 for variety.

I don't want you to think you gave bad advice. The beauty of keeping thesw animals is the that there is not one set method of keeping them. Personally, I have not had good results with feeding supers as a staple, and prefer crickets.

Chase

 

[leedragon]

well if they are given the same food over and over they can stop eating all together, but jemen use to be more tolerant to this

 

[GlennFrog]

Thanks again for the help everyone. I think I'll just stick mainly to crickets, adding in different worms for variety and treats. She's a hungry little thing right now, so I'm hoping that she'll take to cup fed worms as well as she has to the crickets.

 

[sandrachameleon]

...., I fall back on the shotgun approach to feeding; If I can offer variety, I have a better chance of meeting a vitamin/calcium/protein need than 1 or 2 feeders could offer. ...

I agree.
I try to offer no fewer than 10 different prey items during summer (including wild caught prey -done thoughtfully) and no less then 6 types in winter. Try not to offer the same prey type more than two days in a row. Try not to let only one or two types of prey form the majority of the diet.

A chameleon with a varied diet is IMHO more likely to be getting the nutrition it needs, and I suspect is less likely to get "bored" and go on a hunger strike.

 

[GlennFrog]

Try not to offer the same prey type more than two days in a row. Try not to let only one or two types of prey form the majority of the diet.

While I understand how that can keep them interested in food and provide a balanced diet, it seems difficult to provide this amount of variety in practice without a serious space and financial investment. I know that providing for the animals in your care is a serious responsibility, but that level of investment seems somewhat impractical if you only have one chameleon to care for. I can see how keeping a large stock of different feeders would be beneficial to a breeder or sales organization, but it doesn't seem cost effective for the average, one chameleon owner. Is it really so detrimental to feed them only off of two or three staple feeders?

 

[Chase]

While I understand how that can keep them interested in food and provide a balanced diet, it seems difficult to provide this amount of variety in practice without a serious space and financial investment. I know that providing for the animals in your care is a serious responsibility, but that level of investment seems somewhat impractical if you only have one chameleon to care for. I can see how keeping a large stock of different feeders would be beneficial to a breeder or sales organization, but it doesn't seem cost effective for the average, one chameleon owner. Is it really so detrimental to feed them only off of two or three staple feeders?

It wouldn't be cost effective for a large operation either.

I do agree, you do not need 10 feeders you could pick on any day, but I think it is important to offer as much variety as possible. Like I said earlier, many keepers take advantage of free feeders from outside,but you need to live in an area where you can do this without accidentally harming your chameleons.

Chase

 

[GlennFrog]

I don't think that anything caught by my house (in So Cal) would be carrying a significant amount of pesticides, but I think I'd be too afraid of parasites to catch anything from the wild and put it into my chameleon. Like I said, I think I'm going to stick mainly with store bought crickets and meal worms, offering different feeders occasionally as a treat. I think that I'm capable of breeding my own feeders, but I don't have the time required to raise feeders properly. Any more insight/advice on this subject is welcome and greatly appreciated.