odd behaviour change with male veiled cham

joek1

New Member
i own a 5 month old male veiled cham called fingers! (had him for 3 months) and he was got from a very good specialist reptile shop!

right now he is in a wood cage with screened front, the cage is 32 inches tall, 18 inches deep, and 24 inches wide, there is also a screened section at the top back of the cage running the full 24 inches width of the cage, that is roughly 4 inches deep!
also the screened front section can be interchanged with glass, (which i sometimes do for a few hours after spraying to build up a bit of humidity)

(note i am in the process of getting another "adult size cage" for fingers preferably 44 inch tall, 30 inch wide, and 18 inch deep, and i should have it in about a month!)

he has a 18 inch UV-A-B tube (bought new, 3 months old) and a 45 watt basking light on for roughly 14 hrs per day.

temps range from 75 degrees, to 95 degrees (basking spot) in day, and roughly 69, 70, 71 degrees at night, measured with digi thermomiter.

Humidity recently been quite low beetween 35% - 45% (because cold weather in uk has meant central heating has been higher) but now temps are getting warmer central heating has come down and the humidity is now 50% - 62%
and the live plant (weeping fig - (ficus benjimina) in the cage also raised humidity another couple of percents!
(after spraying humidity goes sky high 90% + and gently falls over about 3 hours back to normal)

the cage is placed on top a table in the corner of my grandmothers living room the room is empty most days of the week until about 4pm and there are rarely more than 2 people in the room, also the placment of the cage on top of the table means the cham is nearly always above head height,
when there is too mutch commotion in the room, i usualy cover the cage with a green cloth until it calms down, so not to alarm the cham!

i handle my cham regurlaly, when i open up the cage for misting etc fingers usually makes a B-line for me, and clambers all over me for hours if i allow him! he NEVER gets stroppy any more, (he used to for a few weeks when i first got him, he would puff up, hiss, display his mad colours etc) after a few weeks of owning him i had my fingers near him and i was looking the other way, and he bit my finger, i think he thought it was a bug, worm or insect tho, because he wasnt displaying or hissing when he did it!
I assume from this he enjoys being handled, sometimes after handling him, i will put him back in cage, and he will jump right back onto my hand!

feeding, he used to eat like a horse he would eat 20 or 30 crickets in one helping, but recently he has slowed down drasticly, when i used to bring crickets to him he would dart across cage and devour them eagerly, now if i bring crickets in a tub, he doesnt even bother with them, also if i leave them it the tub in the cage all day he wont bother, he will eat two or three crickets if i hold them up in front of him, and he will eat a couple of them if they crawl near him during the day but thats it, not long ago he went off crickets totally, and would only eat worms, (big mealworms, and waxworms)
but he would only eat two or three mealworms, and i will only feed him 2 or 3 waxworms a week because of there fat content. if i leave him a day or two without food (very very rare) he will be a bit more eager to eat, but he still wont eat much! (he doesnt look underweight at all tho)
the crickets are gut load with assorted fruits, pear, apple etc, greens like kale, cabbage, dandilion etc carrot, sometimes even a little cooked meat, also they get a shop bought dried food called "Bug Grub" which is quite high in calcium and protein! the big mealworms (they are also called zoophobi?????? something or other! worms) are fed kale and cabbage stalks potato, and some fruit! they are all dusted 2 or three times a week with this multivitamin-calcium D3 suppliment called chameleon dust, made by sandfire ranch, and looking at the ingredients it looks quite good, all natural high quality ingredients, like bee polen and all sorts of stuff! and once every 2 weeks i will dust with nutribal vitamin-calcium powder. (he now never gets white deposits from his nostrils, which happened once or twice when i first got him!)

Watering is a problem, i have a dripper on for 24hours a day, dripping onto ficus leaves and into the plant pot, (which has very good drainage so never suffers) it will drip once every 15 seconds (this allows a water bead to develop then drop onto leaves) and i will turn up consistency to 1 drip per second for two or three hours per day usually from about 5pm til about 8pm, also at about 5pm every day i will generously spray the cage, leaves walls etc. the problem is i never see the cham drinking. when i first got him, i saw him underneath the dripper on about 3 occasions he would watch it for about an hour then drink by catching the drops, for a few mins, then leave it! since then i havnt seen him go near the dripper, i have seen him lick the leaves a couple of times after spraying (he usually ends up grabbing the leaf in his mouth tho!) over the last few days i have started using a plastic hyperdermic barrel (very similar to a dripper) and once every other day he will drink from that (usually about 2 or 3 ml) i try him every day but he will only drink every other day.
also he used to climb down to the foot of the ficus and shoot his tounge at the moist soil like he was catching insects, then he would recoil his tounge with the little bit of moist soil still on it, and seemingly eat it? and he started doing this very regurlaly, once every few hours? but the soil had bits of pearlite in it, i was aware chams can accidently or otherwise ingest bits of soil, so i removed ALL the pearlite from the top of the soil B4 placing it in the cage! but i was getting concerned about this behavour, so i got some flat stones and covered the soil
Could the cham for some reason be using the soil as his water supply and not bothering with the dripper, because not long after covering up the soil, he started getting picky with his food (explained above) and his droppings became more infrequent, usually he would shit every day! but since covering the soil up he is down to once every 3 days, i have noticed some light yellow in his urates, its about two thirds yellow, and the rest is white, not like bright yellow, just a bit yellow!
also he has always shed very quickly usualy over in one day, but the last shed, about 2 weeks after covering up the soil, took ages, infact it still isnt all off and he started shedding 3 weeks ago! first his skin on his head and tail came off, then a few days later a couple of legs started shedding, then 3 or 4 days later another leg, and about 4 days ago the last leg shed, now he has a skin left on his lower body which is only now starting to come off?

he looks very healthy, his eyes are open and always flicking around, he has a strong grip and clambers all over the place when handled, im just concerned about his feeding, drinking, shedding, and shitting! i have read sometimes chams loose appetite, and behave differently as they become sexually mature, and that there shedding can take longer when they get older,
maybe i shouldnt worry at all, but thats easier said than done!
anyway sorry for the stupidly long post, and thanks for any help.....
 
Well. . .Quite a long post indeed! Well i'll attempt to answer some of your concerns as will most others including the more experience cham owners on here, but first things first what type of lights are you using (ReptiSun,Exo-Terra, etc. . .), and you need to post some pics of your setup (chams cage and good pics of your cham aswell) and what (sorry if i missed it) are the brands of your supplements? I can tell you strait off the bat that it is not really known why chams eat dirt, but it is common so make sure your live plants soil was removed and replaced w/ organic pesticide and furtilizer free soil. Also make sure you thouroghly (sp?) washed the plants' leaves w/ mild detergent and rinse rinse rinse rinse and rinse the heck out of the plant to avoid any possible poisoning. I would recomend Rep-cal supplements and you can get them here http://lllreptile.com/store/catalog/reptile-supplies/vitamins-medicines-and-cage-cleaners/ as these are the more generally accepted sources of supplementation in my oppinion.

Also the small amout of white in the poop, if it is a bit yellow means there is some dehydration issues as you already suspect, i would recomend misting more often

Hope this helps:D
 
Good luck and welcome!

I get the impression he isn't getting the water he needs. Shedding goes better if the animal is hydrated well. The yellowish urates are good indication of his lack of water intake. I would make his dripper run one drip a second all day. He might be shy enough to not want to be seen drinking. You might want to get a misting system, but drippers work well too.

Eating soil isn't a big deal if it is clean. Like Hilikus said, free of everything, but dirt. My male veiled Jake would climb down his sunning tree and eat ants from the pot. As he ate the ants he would eat dirt. He actually ate so many they stopped going to his tree... or he just ate them all:confused:. After the ants stopped showing up he still would shoot at the dirt and eat it. When chams eat dirt there is risk of impaction. Make sure there isn't anything in the dirt he could snag, like sticks or rocks small enough to eat. Jake had slowed his eating down when eating dirt. So maybe this is just a cycle? Chams will go up and down on food intake at times.

Remember it is winter and they tend to slow down as the temps get cooler. To keep in sink with cooler temps shorten your light cycle to 11 on and 13 off or maybe even 10 on/14 off. Do this slowly.... for a few days run 30 minutes less light.. then a few days later run 30 minutes less.

As for you handling him and covering the cage. Some people say that when a cham comes out willingly he is wanting to get the F away from the cage he is in. Your cage doesn't seem that bad, but we need pics to make a call on that. I would encourage you to get a screen cage. My cham Fred was pretty friendly, still is if you get him out of the cage. I generally think that a cham will climb all over you when it wants to get away or wants to be higher than you. My Melleri will either want to be on your head or he gets on your head and reaches for higher objects. Chams just want to be high up. It isn't, in general, good to handle your cham all that much. about the covering it. If you can provide a good coverage of fake plants along the front of your cage so your cham can feel secure you won't need to cover it. covering it with cloth will not help the cage air circulation.
 
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