One-eyed chameleons experiences?

[FFSTRescue]

I am just curious about different owners who have cared for chameleons that had use of only one eye, how feeding went, how watering went, etc. I just want to hear stories. I recently received a young Flapneck chameleon who is otherwise healthy, but has to have enucleation surgery (eye removal) due to a severely ulcerated eye. If anyone has any tips, tricks, or hints for ease of care and ways to lessen the stress level for feeding, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks

 

[Kent67]

I've had two chameleons with one eye. Popeye, one of my current breeder panthers, is a wild-caught who arrived to the US with one eye. He is able to hit any insect with his tongue just as distant and accurate as any fully-sighted chameleon. The other was a very tame, captive-bred panther that destroyed one eye in an apparent bad fall. That guy could no longer judge distance so I had to hand-feed him the rest of his years. I trained him to drink directly from pipettes and spray bottles so watering was easy. Hopefully once your guy starts feeling the hunger and feeding instinct again his abilities will quickly tell you how much hands-on the recovery will be. Good luck!

 

[Julirs]

Oscar Oustalet is 3 and has one eye that never developed. He lives a completely normal life.

 

[FFSTRescue]

Thanks guys, this makes me feel so much better!

 

[morpheon]

Most stories i have read are basically like Kent said. The only difficulties that i remember are for shooting and moving, everytime being linked to measuring distances and his spatial environment. However, all of them were able to live in an almost-normal life with not many special care (except hand feeding and watering sometimes).

 

[kinyonga]

Crink, male panther, had his eye removed due to cancer. He was WC and with me for over 4 years when this happened....and after a bit of help to get things going he was over 90% accurate at hitting the insects.

I started out hand feeding him because for the first day or two he couldn't hit anything. I gave him slow moving insects like waxworms next and set them increasingly further away from him. He soon learned to "triangulate" and get them...so we moved on to faster moving insects. Took him less than a week to get it figured out.