Preformed Vit A

[drcrossfire]

I have a female that is doing the one eye closed every once in a while thing~ I'm thinking it is a Vit A deficiency.

Soo.. Vit A-- What do you all use to supplement this? Also, what is your schedule?

Thanks~

 

[sandrachameleon]

leaving aside that there are other possibilities for eye troubles... some options include:

You can buy capsules sold for human consumption, poke a needle into one gel cap, smear a small drop under the wings of a cricket or roach, feed it to chameleon. Repeat if and as required, being cautious about giving too much.

Vets can provide an oral solution based on the animals weight

you can use a supplement dust that contains retinol. You can see some options within this blog entry: https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/sandrachameleon/174-whats-supplements-brand.html

You can feed egg or meat or cat food or other preformed vitamin A containing matter to your roaches for a day or two then feed those to the chameleon. Clearly this is a temp measure, not for ongoing

For many years I used no preformed vitamin A whatsoever, and had no issues. I now have Repashy Calcium Plus and use that maybe once a week or perhaps a bit less, in occassional place of other supplements, so my animals now do get some preformed vitamin A. So for no ill effects from this, but I've not been using it all that long either. You can see my current supplment use here: https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/sandrachameleon/food-diary/ Others use teh Repashy product far more frequently, and report no issues. So a product like this (or another containing vitamin A) could be used periodically to ensure no deficiency.

Here are some links in which you may find information useful to your decision making on this topic:
https://www.chameleonforums.com/food-thought-12472
http://web.archive.org/web/200605020...Vitamin.A.html
https://www.chameleonforums.com/chame...nt-want-21534/
Seriously worried.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/carrots-vit-23572
http://jgp.rupress.org/cgi/reprint/47/3/433.pdf
Vitamin A....it scares me
http://www.peteducation.com/article....+1796&aid=3027
Insects and vitamin A and other nutrients.
Vitamins and othr nutrients...
http://www.mendeley.com/research/car...ifer-pardalis/
Vitamin A Supplements From Dr. Ivan Alfonso's Blog
Supplement Confusion
http://www.uvma.org/chameleon/vitaminA.htm
https://www.chameleonforums.com/gutload-vitamin-27997/

 

[RealIzeRecognIze]

I've never used it on my first cham that's still doing great. What do theey use the performed vit. A for?

 

[sandrachameleon]

I've never used it on my first cham that's still doing great. What do theey use the performed vit. A for?

Inadequate amounts of A can result in calcium absorption issues, eye sight issues, etc. Excess preformed vitamin A can prevent the D3 from doing its job, and cause other issues. Using a vitamin powder or providing gutload with a beta carotene (prOformed vitamin A) source of vitamin A is safe, in that beta carotene won't build up in the system like prEformed sources can. However, there is controversy about whether all/any chameleons can convert beta carotene into vitamin A, and its not known which insects do this well either ...so many feel strongly that it is important to provide preformed A.