Risk if Male Panther is larger and older than Female
- Thread starter canzoman
- Start date
summoner12
Avid Member
Males are always bigger than the females. Just keep an eye on them while they mate in order to make sure he doesn't hurt her.
my female is like 1/3 the size of my male and they had no issues.
summoner12
Avid Member
My female isn't older....
You want both animals to be about a year old before mating... one being older than the other doesn't really matter as long as they are both older than 9-12 months.
You want both animals to be about a year old before mating... one being older than the other doesn't really matter as long as they are both older than 9-12 months.
canzoman
New Member
Gotcha. Just want to be sure with Panthers. I've done T. Deremensis and Veiled's.
jannb
Chameleon Enthusiast
I just attended the Chameleon Symposium in Daytona and the first speaker Jim Nozaki talked about chameleon care and breeding and he said a female should weigh 74 grams before breeding. That would be a good size female panther. I normally tell people one year and hope she’s large enough by then because allot of people don’t have a scale.
Chameleon Company
Avid Member
Texas Panther Man
New Member
Jim do you have speicific size you want your females to reach before being bred?
summoner12
Avid Member
I wonder if there is a chameleon Planned Parenthood in madagaskar where the female panthers check their body weight.
Texas Panther Man
New Member
I weigh my females before being bred and a week or so before laying. I never have had a set weight limit on when to breed though. Ive never had any issues. lol
Chameleon Company
Avid Member
No. We do want them to be "full grown", but that can vary by weight between chameleons, and we have certainly imported WC females that were breeding short of a 70g threshold.
I have had this debate before here, and I have often said its not about "age" so much as it is about size, while size can vary. If I raise a female indoors, she will take 8-9 months to attain the size I could get her sister to grow in 5 months in my greenhouse, or outside in FL for 7-8 mos of the year, for that matter. Its time and temp and natural sun, and the more of the latter two, the less of the first is needed. We have many females that breed successfully before they are 6 months old. For sure, raising chameleons indoors under artificial lighting is a slower growing environment than the wilds of Madagascar in summer.
However, there is a good debate to be had about not "rushing" a female to breed, even if she is signaling that she is ready. In the wild, no problem, she's ready when she says so, and they are always impregnated by the child-molesting males .... a bit of a joke, but the only standard in a natural setting is when the female says she is ready.
That's a problem in captivity. Not because she is too young, or two small (again, no such thing in nature), but more because her natural signals are reacting in a captive environment. And in a captive environment, we are more likely to have husbandry deficiencies that take a little more time to work out, that is, properly prepare a female. Our advice is that before a female is allowed to breed, she has spent a month getting extra attention with liquid vitamins and liquid calcium and a few other tricks here, so as to have her most prepared, like a wild chameleon, before we allow her to breed. Providing the female has been on that regimen, she is allowed to breed when she says "OK".
The reason many females are lost during first breeding (compatible breeding only, not a date rape in a small cage) in the hobby is not because they were too young, or too small, but because our husbandry was weak, and first-breeding was destined to be last breeding.
Discretion is the better part of valor too. And waiting a little bit extra before you allow a female to breed, whether it be to gain some more weight, vitamin-mineral load, or just for peace-of-mind, is to err on the side of caution.
jannb
Chameleon Enthusiast
I'm sure in the wild they breed and die at a very young age but the chameleons on here that people are asking about live in captivity and hopefully their keepers would like them to live a long life. I highly respect Jim Nozaki's opinion and I know that he is highly respected by others or he would not have been ask to speak at Chameleon Symposium in Daytona.
Chameleon Company
Avid Member
I know Jm well, and fully respect his advice. However, I have no reason to believe that chameleons in the wilds of Madagascar do not out-perform all of our results in captivity. From all that I know, outside of loss to predation, I am certain that they do out-perform our captive efforts.
In chameleons, Mother Nature is the gold standard.
summoner12
Avid Member
Your answer to the question is the same as mine. You added that Jim N. suggests 74 grams to be a safe weight and that most people don't have a scale, so one year is a safe bet. Which is also what I suggested.
I am making a joke about the fact that females in the wild do not wait for a scale to give them the "A OKAY" for breeding. They decide, on their own, based on years and years and years and YEARS of evolution.
Psi
New Member
I really wonder where he got 74 from. That's just such a random number.
70, 75 ya no problem most people like numbers like that. But 74?
Chameleon Company
Avid Member
Ryan Jarosek
New Member
canzoman
New Member
Just a cougar wive's tale
I like this one...
Ryan Jarosek
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