Question

Ookamii

New Member
Ok im kinda new hear, first time to actually post any thing. I own a 10month female Veiled cham. She has laid 3 unfertilized clutches, then ate all three of them. She keeps showing blue spots and blue lines in her under belly alot, and is puffing up when i stick my hand in the cage to feed her. Is she ready to breed?
 
So your saying she laid three unfertile clutches and ate them? Was she digging in a laying bin when she did this or did she just randomly drop eggs in her cage on three seperate occasions then eat the eggs? Please elaborate....
 
She randomly dropped them in her cage on 3 separate occasions. i had no idea she was gravid till i saw her eat the eggs. She is very Healthy, gets repti-cal once a week on 3 supers, she also gets 4 wax's once a month, and mostly crix. when i get into my new house i will be starting a dubia colony to feed her those as well. also once a week she gets the electrolyte supplement in her water. has a UVB bulb 12 hours a day, and does get natural sunlight as well when the weather permits. her hum and temp are correct.
 
she eats a mix of supers and crix, i give her about 7-10 all together, and remove the extras after about 3 hours if she has not eaten them.
 
Ok not the best diet but not the worst Ive heard either. Do you gutload at all? If so what with?
Also when she dropped these eggs what was the time frame? She she drop them all within a few days of each other. Or was it once every 30-45 days?
 
yes i gut load, with fresh carrots, kale, mustard greens (the last 2 i also give to the cham) Celery, 100% Oatmeal with Rice powder cereal and Cream of Wheat. I am feeding her the stuff the LPS suggested, which is why i joined this forum to figure out what i SHOULD be feeding her. and the eggs where laid within 3 weeks.
 
Well, thats not good. That means that they were all from the same unfertilized clutch. And she was only dropping a few at a time. Did her colors change after the last time she dropped the eggs? She should have switched from gravid coloration back to normal colors. Is she noticeably thinner now post egg depositing. The reason I ask is you want all those old eggs out of her before they rot or before they fuse and she cant pass them normally. If she were mine I would get her to a cham exp vet. She should have an x-ray to determine if the eggs are all deposited. If they arent you better pray she can pass the rest with a shot of oxytocin and a booster shot of liquid calcium.
Otherwise its operation time to remove them. Females need a laying bin in their cages at all times, do you have one for her?
 
well the egg laying was back in december, i forgot to mention that sry. yah she was alot thinner after the 3rd time. now she is healthy again. She is also Bright green with her yellow spots, but starting to show the bright blue spots along her spine and the bright blue stripes under her neck and belly again. she started to show the blue again a few days ago. Her new 3'x2'x4' cage has a laying bin in it now.
 
I would not attempt to breed her now. She is NOT in prime condition to be carrying another clutch so soon. She needs a variety of insects to help full fill her dietary requirements. Cricks, supers, silks, hornworms, roaches, & blue bottle or house flies.
Start gutloading with crick crack for a good grain based dry gutload. I add veggies and fruit to add moisture to the cricks diet and round out nutrition. I add romaine, oranges, apples, pears, zucchini, sweet potatos, greens, etc...
Make sure your supplementing her with calcium w/o D3 at most feedings and 2x a month w/d3 and 1-2 x a month with Minerall or a multivitamin dust.
Sounds like you need to bump up your variety of feeders and your gutloading first and then let her rehab from her prior egg depositing before thinking about breeding her. I'd also go to an every other day feeding schedule also.
 
Ok, thank you so very much, i wasnt planning on breeding her yet. I wanted to make sure she was in top condition to carry the eggs, and i still need to find a male veiled on a breeding loan for when she is healthy, i was thinking maybe in another 3-5 months
 
If you chck the raising kitty blog. You will find some useful info on how to reduce clutch sizes and even possibly stop clutches from forming in veiled females. That way she could rest and not drop another unfertile clutch in the meantime. I would try and let her rest for a minimum of 5 months if possible. She just went thru a very bad ordeal and its amazing she didnt have any complications to this point. Usually they dont drop all of them when they start dropping a few at a time. And often that results in egg binding. I think you'd have seen complications by now if she hadnt dropped all of them back in December though.
 
yah thats what i thought as well, she dropped the final set December 5th. so its been 2 full months now. you live around me where can i get the other feeders from?
 
Mail order all your worms like silks or horns. Mulberry farms are good people. I also get my bb flies from mantisplace.com they are cheap and chams love em. I will give you a bunch of dubia cheap when your ready to start a colony. Just pm me when you want some. Hey you live out in the country. Find a nice field next month and start catching that little lady some grasshoppers and katydids. She will go crazy for the green bugs. Just go out to a nice field thats away from the public and pesticides. I keep all my wc bugs overnight and feed them romaine to purge them. If they had been exposed to pesticides it would have killed them long before I feed them off. (just a tip)
 
ok, yah i live in the country and we have LOTS of grass hoppers, we refuse to use pesticides on our property and its 6 acres. Also i could go to my friends house to look for some on 20 acres with no pesticides used either. he dont want to risk the lives of the wild reptiles or his pets. The offer on cheap dubias is great, ill be in my new place next month and already have a breeding tub to use.
 
Did you not have a place in her cage where she could dig to lay the eggs? IMHO its important to have a suitable place for any sexually mature egglaying female chameleon in her cage at all times so that she won't become eggbound. If she laid all the eggs and is okay now...you are very lucky. She could have been unable to lay them and died.

Here's some information that might help.......
Exposure to proper UVB, appropriate temperatures, supplements, a supply of well-fed/gutloaded insects, water and an appropriate cage set-up are all important for the well-being of your chameleon.

Appropriate cage temperatures aid in digestion and thus play a part indirectly in nutrient absorption.

Exposure to UVB from either direct sunlight or a proper UVB light allows the chameleon to produce D3 so that it can use the calcium in its system to make/keep the bones strong and be used in other systems in the chameleon as well. The UVB should not pass through glass or plastic no matter whether its from the sun or the UVB light. The most often recommended UVB light is the long linear fluorescent Repti-sun 5.0 tube light. Some of the compacts, spirals and tube lights have caused health issues, but so far there have been no bad reports against this one.

Since many of the feeder insects have a poor ratio of calcium to phosphorus in them, its important to dust the insects just before you feed them to the chameleon at most feedings with a phos.-free calcium powder to help make up for it. (I use Rep-cal phosphorus-free calcium).

If you also dust twice a month with a phos.-free calcium/D3 powder it will ensure that your chameleon gets some D3 without overdoing it. It leaves the chameleon to produce the rest of what it needs through its exposure to the UVB light. D3 from supplements can build up in the system but D3 produced from exposure to UVB shouldn't as long as the chameleon can move in and out of it. (I use Rep-cal phos.-free calcium/D3).

Dusting twice a month as well with a vitamin powder that contains a beta carotene (prOformed) source of vitamin A will ensure that the chameleon gets some vitamins without the danger of overdosing the vitamin A. PrEformed sources of vitamin A can build up in the system and may prevent the D3 from doing its job and push the chameleon towards MBD. However, there is controversy as to whether all/any chameleons can convert the beta carotene and so some people give some prEformed vitamin A once in a while. (I use herptivite.)

Gutloading/feeding the insects well helps to provide what the chameleon needs. I gutload crickets, roaches, locusts, superworms, etc. with an assortment of greens (dandelions, kale, collards, endive, escarole, mustard greens, etc.) and veggies (carrots, squash, sweet potato, sweet red pepper, zucchini, etc.)

Calcium, phos., D3 and vitamin A are important players in bone health and other systems in the chameleon (muscles, etc.) and they need to be in balance. When trying to balance them, you need to look at the supplements, what you feed the insects and what you feed the chameleon.

Here are some good sites for you to read...
http://chameleonnews.com/07FebWheelock.html
http://web.archive.org/web/200605020...Vitamin.A.html
http://web.archive.org/web/200406080...d.Calcium.html
http://www.uvguide.co.uk/
http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/200601140...ww.adcham.com/
 
well she has started digging again. im about to move her to a egg laying bin. ive had her since about halloween, is it possible she is WC and gravid with fertile eggs??? she came from petco was 7 months when i got her..
 
just two pics of how she looks right now, the cage she is in the 2nd pic is just a spare tank of mine that she crawled into.
 

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Please do not let her see you watching her when she is digging and please don't bother her any more than absolutely necessary. Please do not move her back and forth to the laying bin either. You want her to get through this egglaying process as normally as possible so she won't end up eggbound.
 
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