Newborn Jackson got munched by adult chameleon

selfmade64856

New Member
My sons chameleon just had babies last night. Before we had the chance to take them out, one of the newborns got chomped on by the adult male. It looks like it's back was broken as it doesn't have the use of it's hind legs. It seems to be fading away and I cannot get it to eat...:(...is there anything I can do for it? I feel utterly horrible for not having been there to prevent this from happening.

There are 8 other babies and none of them have eaten yet. This is our first time dealing with newborns and the lady at the pet shop told my son "yeah, good luck with that" when referring to their mortality rate.

I would rather not loose anymore of them if possible.....they are sooo cute.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
move them to different tank???

Move the babies to a different cage.
How many adults are living in the one enclosure?

You assume that I didn't already take them out, but I wrote "Before we had the chance to take them out" which would hopefully insinuate that I took them out afterwards. It's my first time dealing with baby chameleons....not in exercising common sense ;)

Yes, took all 10 of them out. There are 2 chameleons living in the 5X10X20, so no worries on space deprivation :)

I suppose I should clarify my question:

1. Is there anything such as force feeding the crippled newborn to help her get the nutrition she needs to heal? or is the broken back a lost cause and I should simply euthanize her? Or should I let nature take it's course and leave her be to see how she fairs?
2. Is there any type of special attention that I need to give to the babies other then pinhead crickets or wingless fruit flies? I don't want the lady at the shop to have the satisfaction of an "I told you so".....and I don't want them to die anyway.

Just went in the room to check on the female and she had another baby, this one was stillborn though :( I took it out of it's sac and tried to revive it, but no luck.
 
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I, personally, would put it out of its misery. As for space, unless those measurements are in feet, that is not enough room. It's actually not generally recommended that chameleons even be kept with others unless they are just babies. They stress too easily and mistakes like this are easily avoided when they are housed separately.

I would go put those babies outside where you found the parents and let them handle themselves like they would in the wild.
 
That's good! Jacksons babies seem to be harder for keepers to keep alive/thriving, hence my release suggestion.
 
Yes, they are hard to keep alive and neos have a high mortality rate, but it is possible and we have seen people raise them sucessfully with little experience. They need a cage thatg has decent airflow and you need something that will provide an area of 77-80 for basking and another area in the low 70's where they can cool off if they do not want to bask. They are little eating machines, so make sure you have plenty of feeders for them. As for the one that got chomped, it is up to you. You can see if it starts to eat, and it may survive with a deformity. Again. fact is they may die or they may not. Good luck to you!
 
I had my first litter of baby Jacksons born on 12/16/2010. They are now about 17 weeks old and are up to about 4 1/2"- 5" and are doing great. I don't keep them in glass tanks as some people insist, I keep them in fully screened cages just as you would adults. I use a small 5" aluminum reflector dome clamp fixture to keep about an 80F basking spot, 18" 5.0 UVB light and lots of climbing branches and some artificial vines placed right below the basking spot and some at a lower level right at a spot where an ultrasonic cool mist humidifier is piped into the cage. I also have a mist system placed to drip across a large portion of the upper vines. Kinda elaborate, but the basking spot, UVB light, plants and the humidifer are necessities. These are the first babies Jacksons I've ever raised and I'm quite gratified with the success I've had with them so far. There are other opinions or approaches for raising them- it's up to you. Do some searches on here. I personally don't use glass tanks- they have poor drainage that requires multiple cleaning/draining per day if you have a mist system. Mine have no trouble finding food in a larger screened cage and if it is a requirement for adults I don't see why it shouldn't be for juveniles as well. Just my opinion, and it seems to work for me so far.
I don't know how easy or difficult it is to obtain flightless Drosophila hydei fruit flies where you are, but I would strongly recommend starting several cultures going for them. Once you have them producing flies, they require very little work to maintain them. However, my Jacksons grew so fast that at about 6-8 weeks of age, they would require twice as many flies per day (up to 30-40) than when they were first born. Even though they are extremely prolific, it became impractible to continue giving them these tiny flies. I then had to start raising crickets again, and you probably won't want that headache. I would think that 10 cups of the 32oz. size would produce enough for 10 babies. You can find these cups at Dollar stores for about 3 for a $1. I would start by buying about 20 of them. Start 10 cups, about 8-12 days after you start to have flies emerge, start 10 more. There is debate about how much supplementation montane chameleons should recieve, so I have stuck to dusting with Miner-all O formula (no D3) only every 6 days, but after every 3rd dusting (roughly once every 24 days) I'll substitute the O formula with the Miner-all I formula with D3. Montanes are supposed to be more prone to over supplementation problems, so I try to be very 'reserved' when using dustings. Instead I try to focus on using a very good gutload high in calcium and vegetable based protien by feeding my crickets lots of turnip greens and a good dry gutload I make myself with high levels of spirulina based on research I've done based on some of Sandrachameleons great blogs as well as a few other sources. I'll say again, there are others out there with very different approaches to raising Jacksons babies, and I'm sure that they all have had different levels of success, but this approach has worked very well for my first litter of babies. Hope this has helped. Best of luck. As far as the injured baby, that's a tough call. One of mine had a tongue problem and had to be hand fed. I didn't think she was going to make it, but she has since gotten stronger, is feeding on her own and is finally starting to catch up with her brothers size. You never know, yours might have a chance.
 
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if the back is broken.....euthanize.

babies food: fruit flies: melanogasters are great to start on then move to hiedi. once they are on hiedi you can get pinheads and eighths. at this point i also leave a piece of banana or orange in the cage to produce flies.


GOOD LUCK!
 
Thanks everyone! The baby chams seem to be doing good. The baby that got bit ended up dying.

The other ones are doing well though and have a huge appetite.

The house that we live in always has a breeze coming through it. The windows are shutter style with glass leaves so even if we wanted to, we could never fully close them. The cams have a good crosswind blowing throughout the day and have good sunshine from morning till early afternoon, which is when the sun is over our home.

We will put all of your advise to good use, thank you :)
 
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