Raising Female Veileds: What is the best method?

[spatulars]

On Wednesday I purchased a female veiled chameleon. (Hoehnelli will have to wait.) I've been admiring them from afar for quite some time, and I will be happy when she arrives (although she won't be coming for about a month.) I am torn between two options: keeping her outside with natural sunlight and open air (but warm weather), or keeping her inside with low temperatures so she will not cycle eggs. The outside option would be the easiest and it seems most natural, but I feel the inside option might be the best for her. I learned a lot from Raising Kitty the Veiled Chameleon blog, but if I do decide to keep her inside, will she have enough warmth to digest her food without a basking light? Should I give her warmer temperatures before she sexually matures and only reduce temperatures after? What is the diet and supplementation schedule for an environmentally controlled female veiled?

Any personal input, opinions, and/or advice from experience is greatly appreciated.

 

[jannb]

Hello! If you are not breeding the Raising Kitty way it the best. Your little girl will live a longer life if she doesn't have clutches all the time. Jann

 

[JoshCrane1]

my chams are indoors and my female just cycled her first infertile clutch despite all my efforts to keep her from doing so; including feeding regiment and keeping basking temps as low as possible. im no expert but its really hard to keep them from cycling eggs, its just something you have to prepare for and get used to.

and as far as supplementation, its the same for both my female and male; only difference is she gets more calcium before and after egg production.

 

[SoCaliSon]

If she is inside you do have to provide a basking light. The idea is too provide a temperature gradient so that they have the option to warm up or cool down on their own. I would think that either outside or inside... The best way to keep her from producing a clutch would be to really keep a check on her food intake.

 

[beeze]

I do not use a basking light......I use the instructions provided on the Raising Kitty blog for raising a female veiled. I have a double fluorescent hood over the cage with one tube/linear Repti-sun 5.0 and one regular white fluorescent tube light. This maintains the temperature in the low 80's.

 

[kinyonga]

I do not use a basking light on my female veileds or on the hatchlings. I live in Canada and in the cool months I do have a heater in the room where they are but it only comes on when the temperatures at night go low. The room is likely in the mid to high 70's during the days....and the female's cages have a double fluorescent hood over the cages. The adult males have a small basking light. Of course, in the summer the room is quite warm since I have no airconditioning.

 

[SoCaliSon]

Well that is interesting...

I had always thought that providing a temp gradient was crucial for the digestion process... I will not argue with anyones tried and true methods.

Are you not providing a basking spot for your females becuase of egg production reasons?

 

[kinyonga]

I still have a temperature gradient...the hood is at the back of the cage...so the front "half" of the cage is open.

For the females I do this to try to keep the appetite slightly lower to go along with the "diet" used to keep the egg production from occurring.

For the babies, it keeps the growth and appetite a little lower/slower...and hopefully allows the bones to keep up with the growth of the chameleon. (I'm sure the norm in the wild is for faster growth...but we are not keeping them in the wild, so nothing is really normal in that way.)

You said..."providing a temp gradient was crucial for the digestion process"...I've always thought that having an appropriate temperature was what aided in digestion...now a variation. (That's not saying that there shouldn't be a variation....just that it serves other purposed.)

Tried and true?? Well...for veileds I guess. There is still a lot I have to learn about them and other species! Maybe if I concentrated only on chameleons I would learn faster??

 

[sandrachameleon]

With my first females, I didnt know that a high basking temp area would mean more frequent eggs. So they had the same set-up as the males, with a nice hot basking spot. Which they loved.
Now, my mature female panthers get a 10watt or 15 watt bulb as their basking light, which gives them only a slightly warmer area, just two or three degrees over the ambient room temp (which is 65 lowest at night and 80 highest on summer days, but usually in the mid 70s). Much of the year there is also a few degrees difference in that room from the ceiling to their floor, so they do get a small gradient to choose from. I think giving them this slightly warmer area makes them a little happier. They do cycle eggs, but not as often as their mothers did.

 

[kinyonga]

So far I have not been able to stop panther females from producing eggs either...just the veileds.

 

[spatulars]

Thank you for the input guys. I'm not intending to be unprepared for the possibility of eggs, it's just that I wouldn't want her to go through all the stress and the hunger strike and possible dehydration if she doesn't have to. That being said, I don't want her to get impacted because of the temps and end up cycling eggs anyway. And all my work and regulation could be for naught because I live in a pretty warm area. We'll see I guess.

What is frequency of egg cycling in female veileds? If I give, say, an 85 degree warm spot, would she cycle once a year instead of twice, or would she cycle the normal number of times with less eggs? And how much should I be feeding of say 1/2 inch crickets or med. size roaches to a 6 month old female veiled if I don't want her to have a ton of eggs?

 

[jannb]

Feed 6 to 8 crickets every 2 to 3 days. Jann