Over feeding? What do you think?

NosyBe15

Member
My 9.5 month old male panther seems to always just want to eat. The second I come around the cage he instantly goes into hunt mode looking at my hands. Starting to stick his tounge out even tough they are empty.

In the morning I give him 10-12 med crickets. Which he usually eats allnof them in 3-5 minutes. Gut loaded with cricket crack and fluckers orange. On my lunch breaks I've been giving him a superworm or two. Or one hornworm because they are big. I almost thought they were going to be too big but he seems to love those crazy looking things.

Now when I get home from work he is looking up for more food. Sometimes I might give in and give him a silk worm. But they are small.

How much is too much? He seems to always want to be eating.
 
Its good to see a thread about a panther eating so nicely after reading a lot of threads about hunger strike :)
 
Oh mine is an eating machine. I do get him the good stuff, but if I didn't hold back I bet he would eat all day.
 
At a point at about a year or sometimes earlier they donusually slow down and eat less food. My males always have which leads me to feed every other day. If he is active and not getting fat then giving him the food is fine but giving him the same amount of food every other day would also be fine.
 
Wow he's an eatin machine. My cham is probably around 7-8 months and he only eats 4-5 large crickets and 2 silkworms a day. He used to be a hungry little bugger but now he'll leave crickets in his cage and walk by silkworms. But it is strange cause if I went and grabbed the same cricket that's in his cage and held it up to him to hand feed he'll shoot it instantly, not the same case as the worms though. I wish my guy would eat like a cow but he's always interested in something else.
 
My 9.5 month old male panther seems to always just want to eat. The second I come around the cage he instantly goes into hunt mode looking at my hands. Starting to stick his tounge out even tough they are empty.

In the morning I give him 10-12 med crickets. Which he usually eats allnof them in 3-5 minutes. Gut loaded with cricket crack and fluckers orange. On my lunch breaks I've been giving him a superworm or two. Or one hornworm because they are big. I almost thought they were going to be too big but he seems to love those crazy looking things.

Now when I get home from work he is looking up for more food. Sometimes I might give in and give him a silk worm. But they are small.

How much is too much? He seems to always want to be eating.

I would keep allowing the same amount intake or more of crickets, and silks until around one year of age. He may slow down on eating before then but that is okay.

In the mean time, discontinue the use of the flukers orange cubes for gutloading, and take a look at sandrachameleons blogs on gutloading. Try some fresh greens, squashes, fruits and veg. While flukers may be okay to provide hydration to the crickets, it is not nutritionally acceptable imo.

One last thing, the superworms... Superworms should not be fed daily due to the fat content. They are best suited as an occasional snack for the chameleons. There are many choices for feeders out there. Multiple species of roaches, pheonix worms, hornworms(As snacks), Flies(Great enrichment feeder). The more diversified your chameleons diet, The better! :)
 
That is my main goal for him. I want to give him a variety of feeders. Right now he has the option of crickets, hornworms, superworms, and silk worms.. The silk worms are still a bit too small to feed to my boy but I feed them to my female while they grow.

I was worried that the horn worms were too big for him to eat, but he seems to handle them fine. I gave him a big one this AM and was nervously watching him to make sure he didnt choke or anything. (dont know what I would do if he did) maybe a cham Heimlich haha jk. He sure does love worms.

He just eats like a machine, and I dont want to cause any issues. Because it seems like he would just continue to eat as long as I keep giving him food.

As far as the flukers orange, I really only use that for hydration. I also have cricket crack in there cages which is a bunch of good gutload stuff.
 
Hornworm size

Looking at some of the hornworms I have left. Some are really big. Maybe 3-4 inches.

How big is too big for horn worms??? They aren't cheap so I don't want to waste them, but then again I don't want to feed him anything too big.

He doesn't seem to mind the size. He just loves to eat.
 
Well I'm guessing I fed my Cham a hornworm that was a little too big for him and he shot the tail end of it and its head whipped around and bit him.. So now he's terrified of hornworms and is very cautious about the size of the silkworms I've been feeding him lately. So I'd be a little careful, but you know your Cham the best, do they look massive compared to him? I'd think a year old panther could eat a full grown horn but I am not 100% sure
 
Some are pretty big in the pod. I would say the bigger ones are almost full grown. Guessing 3.5 inches and pretty fat.

The thing that gets me is that he LOVES them. I'm gonna make a video at 200fps this weekend for some nice slo-mo footage. I'll use one of the bigger ones so we can see him "pop" them in the first bite like a Twinkie.

So today he ate 14 med crickets and one big ole horn worm. And was still looking for more a minute or so after the horn worm.

Eating MACHINE!!!!
 
Tossed em

Seemed like the hassle/worry isnt worth the trouble. So I just tossed the remaining monster hornworms in the little garden area in my apt building. Waste of a little bit of cash, but oh well. Live and learn I guess.
 
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