How much do I feed my chameleon!?

[lau217]

Hey, so I just got my baby male veiled chameleon today (3-4 months old). I bought small crickets last week and fed them romaine lettuce, carrots, mushrooms, and strawberries. And I also bought mealworms that I haven't fed anything. They're just in my fridge.
Today he has eaten 10 small crickets as i can tell. I've seen him eat 5 and don't see the rest so I'm assuming he ate them when I wasn't around and also ate one mealworm. Before putting the worms and crickets in the cage I sprayed them with the liquid calcium. This apparently killed the mealworms because they haven't moved after warming up, but was fine of the crickets.

I read that most new chameleons won't eat at first so I put in about two or three at a time through out the day.

My question is how many crickets should my little guy be eating a day? I've read it is up to the chameleon, but I don't want to under feed him! Should I put them all in at once in the morning or keep adding like I did today? Also what others food can I give my little guy?

Thanks y'all!

 

[jannb]

At that age I pretty much feed them all that they want. You need to give him a large variety of feeders and work on your gut loading. Here's a link to my blog for new keeper. I have some gut load suggestions there.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/blo...-keepers-young-veiled-panther-chameleons.html

 

[Kate]

Not too sure of the calcium spray. I would try to get a plain calcium without d3 for use daily. You can lightly dust with a powder but it would be difficult to measure what you are giving with a spray.

 

[kplatvoet]

Be careful when you get the powder - I was in Petco yesterday and they had a zoo med product with a Jackson picture on it that had D in it - since od'ing a Jackson on D is very easy it pissed me off.
I find the easiest way to figure out what to give my crickets is to look at the list of "staple" vegies for bearded dragons- pretty much every thing on it is good. When you first look at Sandra's gut loads you may ask yourself "what did I get myself into" but what I did was to start with "bug burger" (the only one you can get at a pet store" and then I started adding ingredients till I have enough to make a good one on my own.

 

[sandrachameleon]

offer as much prey as he can eat within about 5 minutes, 2-3 times a day.
offer as wide a prey selection as possible - appropriately sized crickets, superworms, silkworms, butterworms, soldier fly maggots (aka calciworms or phoenix worms), terrestrial isopods, termites, blue bottle flies, moths, indian walking sticks, cockroaches, etc.

mealworms drown easily. better if you gutload them for the day prior to feeding off, and use a calcium powder to lightly dust them. Don't offer too many mealworms, keep to less than 20% of total diet.