non living food options????

Hoj

Hoj

Friendly Grasshopper
so for those of you who do not know i have a 1yr old veiled wqho lost his tounge about 5 m ago he has recover very well and is such a trooper.
well due to the fact that he has no tounge he pretty much eats his food whole and is not liking moving bugs anymore i think they get stuck in his throte. so am trying to figure out how i can get him the propor nutrition with people foods. he loves fruit and veggies and i can dust them with his suppliments but i am wondering what else he needs that he gets from the feeders ie, protine ect, i am thinking small slivers of boiled or baked white meat like fish or chicken but not too sure. so.......any ideas

as always thanks

hoj
 
Aw poor guy. I'm glad he has recovered! May I ask how he lost his tounge? Sorry I can't help with your question
 
Hoj said:
confused by this comment:confused::confused:
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Just someone to ignore.

Your best bet is to hand feed him as much as possible.

One of my male veileds despite having a perfectly fine tongue will actually run after superworms if they fall on the bottom of the cage and eat them like any other lizard. He's weird like that.
 
Hoj said:
so for those of you who do not know i have a 1yr old veiled wqho lost his tounge about 5 m ago he has recover very well and is such a trooper.
well due to the fact that he has no tounge he pretty much eats his food whole and is not liking moving bugs anymore i think they get stuck in his throte. so am trying to figure out how i can get him the propor nutrition with people foods. he loves fruit and veggies and i can dust them with his suppliments but i am wondering what else he needs that he gets from the feeders ie, protine ect, i am thinking small slivers of boiled or baked white meat like fish or chicken but not too sure. so.......any ideas

as always thanks

hoj
Click to expand...

I wouldn't do the fish/chicken because I've heard to much animal protiens might be the cause of gout.

are you sure it's a issue with them getting stuck in his throat? I know my guy kind of goes back and forth on what he wants to eat. for a while he'll like crickets, then worms, then he might refuse every thing but flying bugs.

if live prey really is a issue you might blend up some bugs and make a "bug smoothy" and feed it with a syringe or medicine dropper (at lest I've heard of a few people doing it that way) but I would think that would be a last resort, maybe try smaller bugs or soft body worms for a while (like silk and hornworms)
 
ignore away. fish and chicken, cant get much more protein than that. The cham will love it.

Honestly though, really?? no. thats just... The simple fact is chams are Insectivores, and for a reason. blah blah blah protein is bad for chams. If the bugs are scurrying around too much just cut the legs off leaving only the front two legs. they don't go so fast but they still move a bit. chams generally need motion to get interested.
 
lol I would just try killing the bug before you give it to the chameleon. Sometimse the other crickets will steal their friends legs and make them mobiless and my chams still eat them XD
 
iLik3LIzards - there are ways to offer constructive criticism without just being a jerk. Hoj has worked really hard to try to get Camo back on track and keep him healthy. Would just answering the question straight up really have been that hard? It's not that he won't eat bugs, it's that without a tongue it is very difficult for him to eat them, which means you need to be resourceful. You are right about animal proteins causing kidney damage and gout, but people will be much more inclined to actually listen to you if you aren't trying to make them feel like an idiot.

Hoj - I agree that the protein from animal meat would be too much and not really necessary. I would not be surprised at all if an all veggie diet would sustain him very well! Leafy plants do have a lot of protein if that's what you're concerned about. A cricket averages about 20% protein, so at less than a gram weight for a cricket you're talking about ~0.2g protein. So at 5-10 crickets a day a cham would get about 1-2g of protein. Whereas a half cup of collard greens for instance is 1-2g of protein all by itself. Vegetable proteins are easier to digest and chams as insectivores are better suited for using plant proteins than animal proteins. I would suggest offering as varied of a plant diet as possible with staples being your dark leafy greens and continuing to supplement. So use dark leafy greens (you can rotate a different kind each week or so) and then snacks of other fruits and veggies as well to create a balanced diet. I bet that he will continue to thrive for you. :)

Or if you're desperate you could also mush up some small crickets in with his fruit/veggies so he doesn't have to eat them individually and maybe they wouldn't give him trouble that way. You don't have to blend them up or anything, just mash them a little in between two small leaves like a sandwich! They pretty much eat the leafy bits whole so the crickets might just sneak down with them!
 
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ferretinmyshoes said:
iLik3LIzards - there are ways to offer constructive criticism without just being a jerk. Hoj has worked really hard to try to get Camo back on track and keep him healthy. Would just answering the question straight up really have been that hard? It's not that he won't eat bugs, it's that without a tongue it is very difficult for him to eat them, which means you need to be resourceful.

Hoj - I agree that the protein from animal meat would be too much and not really necessary. I would not be surprised at all if an all veggie diet would sustain him very well! Leafy plants do have a lot of protein if that's what you're concerned about. A cricket averages about 20% protein, so at less than a gram weight for a cricket you're talking about ~0.2g protein. So at 5-10 crickets a day a cham would get about 1-2g of protein. Whereas a half cup of collard greens for instance is 1-2g of protein all by itself. Vegetable proteins are easier to digest and chams as insectivores are better suited for using plant proteins than animal proteins. I would suggest offering as varied of a plant diet as possible with staples being your dark leafy greens and continuing to supplement. So use dark leafy greens (you can rotate a different kind each week or so) and then snacks of other fruits and veggies as well to create a balanced diet. I bet that he will continue to thrive for you. :)

Or if you're desperate you could also mush up some small crickets in with his fruit/veggies so he doesn't have to eat them individually and maybe they wouldn't give him trouble that way. You don't have to blend them up or anything, just mash them a little in between two small leaves like a sandwich!
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Hey do you have any tips at getting a Veiled to eat green veggies? I was able to get them to eat the colorful fruit.... but they will not eaat the green veggies.... they dont even eat their leaves off of their trees...
 
Leroux2008 said:
Hey do you have any tips at getting a Veiled to eat green veggies? I was able to get them to eat the colorful fruit.... but they will not eaat the green veggies.... they dont even eat their leaves off of their trees...
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While they're trying to eat their fruit you could bait-n-switch with some leafy greens. After a few times they may realize they like it! Mine was easy - he tried to eat some fake leaves in his cage so I put real ones in that spot and now he knows exactly where his salad will be and goes straight to that spot when he wants it! It's about the only thing about him that is easy... He likes turnip greens and dandelions the best.
 
Hoj you have been so great with Camo. For that to happen to a inexperienced keeper and you to handle it so well says a lot about how you take care of your chameleons. Since you are doing great with Camo just keep on with what your are doing.
 
I'm Pretty sure Ilikelizards facepalm comment was supposed to be a facepalmed smiley. No need t get mad as I didn't take that as talking crap Or being a jerk just a crap ur Cham bit his tounge off smiley. Am I wrong Ilikelizards?
 
Have you ever tried silkworms? When you say he doesn't like moving bugs, what kind of bugs are you referring to? What have you offered him? Is it because they run too fast, or he doesn't like them moving in his mouth?

The silkworms are very good for him and might be at least one source of insect food you could offer, and they are soft and easy to eat. If the wiggling bothers him, you could put them in the freezer for a half hour or so and this should kill them, and then of course thaw them to room temperature before feeding. You could also freeze and kill crickets and then remove all the legs to make them more easy to swallow....once again, be sure they are room temperature before feeding. Of course there are other ways to kill them but freezing is easy and not messy....just another option!

I think the "veggies" are great but if you could still get some insects into him, that would be all the better. Like someone else said, if he is eating greens, etc. from a dish, mix in a few small silkworms or dead, legless crickets - he might not even notice......or he might even like them that way!!!
 
ok so this is kinda hard to explain but i will try if you have watched your cham eat very closely ( sure most of us have ) you will notice that after they shoot their prey they kinda keep it stuck to the end of their toung and move it anround thier mouth and chew it up untill its a nasty sqishy mess that they can swallow. well because he does not have a tounge he does not seem to have the mechanics in his mouth to do this. he can only get one or two chomps then he either has to swallow or risk dropping the bug. therfor when he eat them i belive they get stuck in his throte of even the roof of his mouth, ( i have had to pick of stuck crickets from the inside of his mouth on numerous occasions ) even dead crickets seem to have so many pointy rough parts that without chewing them to a mash they get stuck. then he gets scared to eat them.. i do really like the idea of putting some mashed up food between to leaves, as he does not like to eat from a sringe, he still likes to feel like hes taking the food, if that makes sence.

yes i have tried worm butters are his fav, but im affriad supers and horns will be too big and cause the same prob, silks are also good but harder for me to get and keep alive/healthy, and he doenst like them that much

as for the whole ilikelizzards i wasnt assumiong rudness at first mearly confused as to weather they/you were being rude or simply trying to type the action of putting your hands over your face in shock of his tounge accident. if it was your intention to be rude feel free to PM me.

thanks for all the help everyone.

hoj
 
Hoj said:
yes i have tried worm butters are his fav, but im affriad supers and horns will be too big and cause the same prob, silks are also good but harder for me to get and keep alive/healthy, and he doenst like them that much

hoj
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On hornworms I'd get small ones (they grow fast as you know) most the time some grow dater than others, as they near the size you want feed off the largest ones then start rotating them in the icebox (I think you can keep them in 1 day then out for 2, tho I may have that backwards) the warmer they are the faster they grow, the cooler the slower, putting them in the fridge puts them into hibernation and it takes a day or so for them to kick back into "high gear" so if you just buy enough for a few weeks you should be able to keep them at a manageable size.
 
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