How much should my chameleon be eating?

[Jol]

I have recently purchased a juvenile, female chameleon. She has not developed any mature colours so I'm assuming she is around 6 months. The fish and reptile shop that I purchased her at informed me to be feeding her "a couple of locusts a day". I had conducted quite a large amount of research before purchasing her as I didn't want to get anything wrong as I know how difficult chameleons are to care for and what I had read was that, when in the juvenile stage they should be eating anywhere from 7/8 locusts - 12 locusts a day (this information was from different sources hence the difference in numbers). I'm currently feeding her around 8-10 locusts (I do plan on obtaining a more varied number of insects soon) because she eats everything that I hand feed her and/or put in her enclosure. I'm not sure if I'm over-feeding her as I couldn't discover if chameleons are similar to dogs and simply eat when food is readily available to them, or if they eat only when they're hungry.

I'm just trying to work out if I'm feeding her too much as I don't know how their brain works when food is concerned.

 

[SocialNumb]

https://www.chameleonforums.com/care/caresheets/

Pick your Chameleon, assuming it's one of those, and read the instructions. Pretty spot on, more or less.

 

[jajeanpierre]

I have recently purchased a juvenile, female chameleon. She has not developed any mature colours so I'm assuming she is around 6 months. The fish and reptile shop that I purchased her at informed me to be feeding her "a couple of locusts a day". I had conducted quite a large amount of research before purchasing her as I didn't want to get anything wrong as I know how difficult chameleons are to care for and what I had read was that, when in the juvenile stage they should be eating anywhere from 7/8 locusts - 12 locusts a day (this information was from different sources hence the difference in numbers). I'm currently feeding her around 8-10 locusts (I do plan on obtaining a more varied number of insects soon) because she eats everything that I hand feed her and/or put in her enclosure. I'm not sure if I'm over-feeding her as I couldn't discover if chameleons are similar to dogs and simply eat when food is readily available to them, or if they eat only when they're hungry.

I'm just trying to work out if I'm feeding her too much as I don't know how their brain works when food is concerned.

What species?

All I can say is "it depends."

It depends on the temperatures, the size of prey, the nutritional/calorie content of the prey, the size of the animal, the stage of growth they are currently in. Lots of things go into "how much."

One thing you don't want to do with a pet female chameleon is encourage her to lay eggs. Some females, particularly Veiled females, can end up producing a lot of eggs on a regular basis which will ultimately shorten their lives. In the wild, they may only produce a clutch of 30 eggs once a year. Take that same veiled and give her a lot of food and high temperatures and she starts producing multiple clutches of upwards of 100 eggs. This is a tremendous cost to her physically. Their lifespans are much shorter and they often die from reproductive issues plus are more susceptible to get metabolic bone disease.

Jannb has some links for keeping veiled chameleons. She's had a lot of success with Veileds and I hope she chimes in with those links.