My adult female veiled cage. Am I doing anything wrong?

[BrendenBilodeau]

Since this is my first chameleon I am trying to know everything about a properly set up enclosure for her. I have fake and real plants in it and the background is made of cork bark pieces and real sticks. She has several vines and foliage throughout the cage but I don't know if I should give her more spaces to hide? I also have a laying bin of 50/50 play sand and organic soil without fertilizer. the walls of the cage are screen and I have a reptisun 5.0 modular light and a double uvb/basking behind it. I mist semi-regularly because she gets scared of the mist (I dont shoot her in the face she just doesnt like getting misted). The humidity stays at about 50% with my humidifier and the basking temps are about 85-90 during the day.

Anyway please critique my set up?

 

[jpowell86]

Since this is my first chameleon I am trying to know everything about a properly set up enclosure for her. I have fake and real plants in it and the background is made of cork bark pieces and real sticks. She has several vines and foliage throughout the cage but I don't know if I should give her more spaces to hide? I also have a laying bin of 50/50 play sand and organic soil without fertilizer. the walls of the cage are screen and I have a reptisun 5.0 modular light and a double uvb/basking behind it. I mist semi-regularly because she gets scared of the mist (I dont shoot her in the face she just doesnt like getting misted). The humidity stays at about 50% with my humidifier and the basking temps are about 85-90 during the day.

Anyway please critique my set up?

I think you did very well. The only thing I would suggest is more plants. The middle area of the enclosure could use another pothos or a plant of some kind. I like to offer as much foliage as possible for my chams. Also, the laying bin is a bit on the shallow side. How deep is the container you are using? She is very pretty by the way!

 

[JGuinan007]

Is she about to lay eggs? Her belly looks big and she is roaming the bottom of the cage.

 

[BrendenBilodeau]

Yes! She has been displaying her receptive colors for over a week now. She hasn't started digging at all though. she is very restless and always wants to come out of her cage. I don't know what I should do for her, she can't come out of her cage because she could get hurt if she falls off of a slippery surface.

 

[BrendenBilodeau]

I think you did very well. The only thing I would suggest is more plants. The middle area of the enclosure could use another pothos or a plant of some kind. I like to offer as much foliage as possible for my chams. Also, the laying bin is a bit on the shallow side. How deep is the container you are using? She is very pretty by the way!

The container I have in there probably could be a bit deeper, it's only about 9" deep with dirt all the way filled to the top. I would put a bigger bin in her cage but the background blocks anything bigger in size due to the sticks coming out. I was thinking I could make some taller walls and put another few inches of sand/soil mix to make it an even 12". However, she still has not shown any signs of digging or wanting to dig. She does loops around the cage constantly, but I figure I'd see her try to dig by now?

 

[JGuinan007]

I've heard of people making trash cans into laying bins fill the bottom with 12 inches of soil and put cage on top with long sticks to the bottom so she can go up and down it also makes it more secretive and chameleons love secrets but I know nothing about laying bins but there are plenty of threads about them and videos too here just do a search

 

[BrendenBilodeau]

I've heard of people making trash cans into laying bins fill the bottom with 12 inches of soil and put cage on top with long sticks to the bottom so she can go up and down it also makes it more secretive and chameleons love secrets but I know nothing about laying bins but there are plenty of threads about them and videos too here just do a search

But what if I couldn't do that for her, would she still lay the eggs in her bin if I cover up her cage?

 

[JGuinan007]

probly not she would become egg bound and die

 

[JGuinan007]

I would read up on proper laying bins they don't have to be pretty just effective at getting eggs out of your female chameleon

 

[jajeanpierre]

Since this is my first chameleon I am trying to know everything about a properly set up enclosure for her. I have fake and real plants in it and the background is made of cork bark pieces and real sticks. She has several vines and foliage throughout the cage but I don't know if I should give her more spaces to hide? I also have a laying bin of 50/50 play sand and organic soil without fertilizer. the walls of the cage are screen and I have a reptisun 5.0 modular light and a double uvb/basking behind it. I mist semi-regularly because she gets scared of the mist (I dont shoot her in the face she just doesnt like getting misted). The humidity stays at about 50% with my humidifier and the basking temps are about 85-90 during the day.

Anyway please critique my set up?

I hate critiquing sets ups that are looking pretty darn good!

First off, there aren't a lot of small-diameter perches and a lot of the branches you have are pretty slick. My feeling is they prefer perches that are sized from twigs (smaller than a pencil) to about half an inch in diameter. I would put more up high and fill in the open areas.

One of the problems with plastic plants is that they are so thick and dense, the animal can't move through them. I pull a lot of the tufts off to thin the plastic plants out. Rather than let them hang in one big mat of pretty but basically unusable fake greenery, I string the strands out around the cages, using the almost bare plastic vines as branches. I use the tufts I pulled off and attach them to natural branches. If you use natural branches including the very tips where the leaves are, you can push the extra tufts onto the ends so you get a natural branch with fake leaves.

I've found that two out of three of my adult females (quads not veileds) get quite restless for days before laying eggs. One gets extremely restless when she is receptive. My quads are a pretty docile species and normally just sit around looking pretty, but when they get into that restless phase, they will almost leap out onto my arm to get out of the cage as soon as I open the door. Her restlessness might be because she is either receptive, getting ready to lay eggs or the cage is too small.

I have no experience with veileds laying eggs and I am certainly not suggesting you do what I do. I use a much shallower bin for my quads, but I've also heard that quads lay fairly shallow. I have hiked through a lot of the areas in the south west of Saudi Arabia where veileds come from and they live in a pretty tough arid land. They don't live in a rain forest! (Here's a link to a YouTube video of a veiled in the wild in Yemen. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoBLF1FKB9w Have a look at the terrain and you'll get an idea of where they come from. That is not fog--it is dust in the air.) Some places get rain for only a few days a year so I can't believe the ground is going to be at all easy for them to dig in. Maybe they only lay in November when the rains come. I think that in the wild, they probably dig until they run into ground too hard or roots and rocks that stop their progress. I also wonder just how deep a veiled would dig if it had unlimited soft, easy to dig substrate. I think it would be a lot deeper than 12".

Hope I've been a little help to you.

 

[BrendenBilodeau]

I hate critiquing sets ups that are looking pretty darn good!

First off, there aren't a lot of small-diameter perches and a lot of the branches you have are pretty slick. My feeling is they prefer perches that are sized from twigs (smaller than a pencil) to about half an inch in diameter. I would put more up high and fill in the open areas.

One of the problems with plastic plants is that they are so thick and dense, the animal can't move through them. I pull a lot of the tufts off to thin the plastic plants out. Rather than let them hang in one big mat of pretty but basically unusable fake greenery, I string the strands out around the cages, using the almost bare plastic vines as branches. I use the tufts I pulled off and attach them to natural branches. If you use natural branches including the very tips where the leaves are, you can push the extra tufts onto the ends so you get a natural branch with fake leaves.

I've found that two out of three of my adult females (quads not veileds) get quite restless for days before laying eggs. One gets extremely restless when she is receptive. My quads are a pretty docile species and normally just sit around looking pretty, but when they get into that restless phase, they will almost leap out onto my arm to get out of the cage as soon as I open the door. Her restlessness might be because she is either receptive, getting ready to lay eggs or the cage is too small.

I have no experience with veileds laying eggs and I am certainly not suggesting you do what I do. I use a much shallower bin for my quads, but I've also heard that quads lay fairly shallow. I have hiked through a lot of the areas in the south west of Saudi Arabia where veileds come from and they live in a pretty tough arid land. They don't live in a rain forest! (Here's a link to a YouTube video of a veiled in the wild in Yemen. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoBLF1FKB9w Have a look at the terrain and you'll get an idea of where they come from. That is not fog--it is dust in the air.) Some places get rain for only a few days a year so I can't believe the ground is going to be at all easy for them to dig in. Maybe they only lay in November when the rains come. I think that in the wild, they probably dig until they run into ground too hard or roots and rocks that stop their progress. I also wonder just how deep a veiled would dig if it had unlimited soft, easy to dig substrate. I think it would be a lot deeper than 12".

Hope I've been a little help to you.

/

Thank you for the reply and great info! I want to put more branches up towards the top but I feel like since she's an adult and sort of big, I don't want to limit her space with more twigs. I do however like your idea about taking the fake foliage and wrapping it around the sticks. The way I'll have to set her up with a laying bin I think will have to be with a big rubbermade container and perch her cage above it and a hole cut in the floor of the cage so she can get into the bin. That way she'll have more privacy with the rubbermade container being dark and more spacious.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Actually, filling the top of the cage with sticks gives her MORE usable space.

That's a good idea for the laying bin. You'll figure out what works for you.