Sherman has arrived!

[Chameleon Crazy Chick]

He's adorable! I love him!
Can't wait to watch him grow...
He's gonna get ALL the ladies.... with the classic "Sherman Walk"!!

 

[timw1]

Spoiled no doubt! I'm still trying to get my guy to hand feed. It happened once, only when I had several small dubias crawling all over my hand.

 

[broderp]

Spoiled no doubt! I'm still trying to get my guy to hand feed. It happened once, only when I had several small dubias crawling all over my hand.

Keep at it. I'm no pro for sure, but it worked out for me. Sherman eats from my hand regularly now. I never would have guessed.

If several feeders worked for you once, it may work again. Maybe hit him up when he normally eats. If he eats regularly first thing in the morning, he may be hungry. Use that to your advantage and offer him feeders then rather than later when he may not be hungry.

Since he started to hand feed, I've also noticed he doesn't hide as much, its still a lot, but I see him out in the open more and when I do he's not doing the 'Sherman walk' so much, it's almost like a regular pace and not a cautious.

 

[broderp]

LOG ENTRY 3-24-17
Sherman's first SUPER WORM.

He ate his first large super worm today on accident. I was not sure he could eat such a large worm. I was actually trying to size one up (looking for the smallest one) and I held one up in my palm to see if it looked to big. It looked huge to me. The next thing I know, I feel the hit of his tongue and see the worm fly to my little Sherman's mouth.

I was petrified he would not be able to eat it, choke on it or something! I was afraid to try and pull it out so I sat and watched him him for about 4 minutes as he chomped and chomped the worm down.

I started a thread here to ask about what I thought was a scary event that may be bad for my baby. Turns out I was concerned about nothing. I will be giving him more fo these sized worms in the future.

Here's my baby with his worm. He has about 1/2 of it down.

I took a 40 second video, but as soon as I turned on the camera he got camera shy and just sat there with a worm hanging from his mouth. As soon as I put the camera down....CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP!!!! This was funny as he's not camera shy. I guess this being a "New flavor and size" he was not wanting to be disturbed. I kind of got the stink eye.

Here is the thread if anyone is curious.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/the-tougue-is-quicker-than-the-hand-advise-please.156903/

 

[timw1]

LOG ENTRY 3-24-17
Sherman's first SUPER WORM.

He ate his first large super worm today on accident. I was not sure he could eat such a large worm. I was actually trying to size one up (looking for the smallest one) and I held one up in my palm to see if it looked to big. It looked huge to me. The next thing I know, I feel the hit of his tongue and see the worm fly to my little Sherman's mouth.

I was petrified he would not be able to eat it, choke on it or something! I was afraid to try and pull it out so I sat and watched him him for about 4 minutes as he chomped and chomped the worm down.

I started a thread here to ask about what I thought was a scary event that may be bad for my baby. Turns out I was concerned about nothing. I will be giving him more fo these sized worms in the future.

Here's my baby with his worm. He has about 1/2 of it down.

I took a 40 second video, but as soon as I turned on the camera he got camera shy and just sat there with a worm hanging from his mouth. As soon as I put the camera down....CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP!!!! This was funny as he's not camera shy. I guess this being a "New flavor and size" he was not wanting to be disturbed. I kind of got the stink eye.

Here is the thread if anyone is curious.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/the-tougue-is-quicker-than-the-hand-advise-please.156903/

^^^^^ Nice Pic!

 

[broderp]

Weekends are for Super Worms.

3-26-17

 

[timw1]

Yup, he's a badazz!

 

[broderp]

LOG ENTRY 4-09-17
Sherman's gets new "mood" lighting

Ok, so it's not really mood lighting. I have 3 separate timers for the 3 different lights:

• Hood lighting with Red LED's (Not so bright)
• UVB lighting (adds to the brightness, my "middle "brightness")
• Perimeter LED lighting that really super brighten the terrarium.

The three timer allows me to roughly approximate sunrise, full sun light and sunset in 3 stages. I know I hate to be woken up with a full blaring lights so I figure, why not wake up Sherman slowly as well? I played with this idea for a little while and realized it worked pretty well. I also noticed that after a few days of manually doing this, Sherman would "go to bed" once the main lights and UVB were off (just the reddish Hood lights on).

Here's Sherman looking for his sleeping spot before putting on his pajama's.

 

[Owlco]

Another milestone for little Sherman. He learned to use his feeding trough. This started out as a feeding cup, but he ignored it or didn't see it. So he was hunting and it was hard to see how many he was actually getting. So I modified his feeder cup I made and turned it into a feeding trough. I added a foam surround to protect his little feet from the cut edge and set it down below him. Works....Here is is eyeballing the selection. Because he is so small. I simply wedge this between some of the sticks in his terrarium and its secure enough.

The open end design also allows me to count the number of feeders eaten as well as make it easy to clean. Here's Sherman using the foam to grip as he crosses over the trough.

I will be starting his D3 and supplements Monday.

Yes, I have video of all this as well.. He's getting used to the tripod and camera that seems to be in front of him a lot.

Wow great job on the Feeder, i need to make something like this for my Cham!

 

[opheliaeatsbugs]

He's adorable. I love your enclosure (going to look up the red lights you use). Ophelia is photographed more than my own children lol

 

[joshuadh2310]

Sounds like he is doing great! Love seeing his colors coming in keep up the good work!

Spoiled no doubt! I'm still trying to get my guy to hand feed. It happened once, only when I had several small dubias crawling all over my hand.

Sorry if this is a little late but hope you guys have gotten better at hand feeding! My girl wasn't having it at first either but I'm about 3ish months in with her and now she sits at the front of the cage waiting for me to hand feed her by her feeder cup as she also learned that's what that was lol. Also she first stared hand feeding on a free range I'm not sure if that helped her feel less confined or not but it seemed to help. Good luck!

 

[broderp]

Wow great job on the Feeder, i need to make something like this for my Cham!

Fairly cheap and it works well. I have one issue with it, and that is now that Sherman is getting bigger, he weighs more. The feeder starts to rotate if he sits on one side or the other! I watched him slip off the other day via his remote camera feed. I was so terrified that he could have fallen to the bottom of the terrarium. Luckily, there are lots of sticks so he slid on them and just climbed back on. I've added rubber strips around the bottom to help it stick to the branches it's resting on and prevent rotation. I will be looking for a heavier duty version soon that I can secure to the glass.

Sounds like he is doing great! Love seeing his colors coming in keep up the good work!

Sorry if this is a little late but hope you guys have gotten better at hand feeding! My girl wasn't having it at first either but I'm about 3ish months in with her and now she sits at the front of the cage waiting for me to hand feed her by her feeder cup as she also learned that's what that was lol. Also she first stared hand feeding on a free range I'm not sure if that helped her feel less confined or not but it seemed to help. Good luck!

His colors are till al over the place, but mostly darker colors. Occasionally he turns blue (like my avatar image) I can see the lighter colors coming thru a little more, hopefully this will continue. He's growing fast. I plan on capturing him (sad to say this is what I will need to do to handle him) and weigh him. He's about twice as big as when I got him. He's much easier to see in the terrarium.

Sherman and I have a great relationship when it comes to hand feeding. We are working on the crawling onto my hand at present. It's slow, but I think we will get there with a couple of juicy super worms.

Thanks for all the kind words.

 

[JACKSON-BREEDER-16]

He's Beautiful! So does the glass cage work out fine?

 

[broderp]

He's Beautiful! So does the glass cage work out fine?

Thank you for the kind words about my little Sherman.

Yes "glass works out well, but I have to keep an eye out for the humidity. Due to the number of live plants I have, my humidity is easily thrown out of balance. (goes way up!) I keep a fan running during the day to draw air thru the enclose helping to circulate fresh air and help dry out the terrarium. I also dry the bottom one a day in the evening when I take out his feeder for it's nightly cleaning.

Also note, it's not a "glass cage" it's a terrarium. It was designed for this and has airflow to avoid stagnant air. Below the double doors there is a ridge with many openings. This is where air can be drawn in and up out thru the top.

This is the enclosure:

I will need to monitor this as spring and summer approach as I use AC in my home. I may not have any issues with humidity if the relative humidity of the house if really low.

 

[broderp]

LOG ENTRY 4-16-17
Sherman's weigh in.

Weigh in last night at 33 grams (1.15 oz). He wasn't happy about the capture and I was afraid he was going to climb out of the box. (He almost did twice) I guess I knew he was growing, but you can't put it into perspective unless you can compare it to something that puts it into scale. I used his original shipping box. I took one look at the deli-cup he came in and realized how much we had grown. There is no way he's going back in that! So I removed the stuff and placed him in the box on my scale. He was not very happy!


My previous weigh in was much less than this, but for the life of me I can't find it. I want to say somewhere's between 6-12 grams. It's been a while. I'm sure I have a video or picture of it some wheres.

He was hatched 10-23-17, so he is about 6 months old now. (Next weekend will be 6 months). He was really pisses at me, but let me capture him, didn't hiss or bite which is a good thing because he has some serious little chompers! Here's we are back on good terms, after all it is Super Worm Sunday!! (he got 3 today, but he promised to still eat his crickets.)

Look at those teeth!

Here's a few cool shots, I hope the "blues" stays. He gets real teal color when eating or hunting, but a lot of the time he's much darker.

Much brighter when he's hunting!

 

[MissyMoo]

I just read this thread, oh how cute is sherman , seems to of changed so much over duration on thread already. Love your set up for him & feeder, can i just ask how your plants are doing? Im not great with my plants just wondered how lights was working? Something to consider adding if helps with them

 

[broderp]

I just read this thread, oh how cute is sherman , seems to of changed so much over duration on thread already. Love your set up for him & feeder, can i just ask how your plants are doing? Im not great with my plants just wondered how lights was working? Something to consider adding if helps with them

Thanks for the kind words.

The plants are doing great. I have to prune them often to keep it "civilized" in there. I had about 5 real plants when I started, but had to scale it back because I have way too much humidity. The large Pothos I had to add a taller stick into the pot because it has grown the height of the terrarium. I'm down to 3 live plants. I just figured out a method to control the humidity and it's looking really good, so I will add them back in. Also, now that Sherman is larger and I believe I have the humidity thing licked, I will be adding some back in. He's not so easy to lose in all the plants any more.

Here is a more recent picture of the plants. I was laying out "zones" for his mister and dry spots and feeding. You can see how bare it is at the bottom, and I'm OK with this as hopefully he will never be down there for very long. To keep it from being bare, I put some large foam trimmings from his wall that I made and a T-Rex skull.

 

[MissyMoo]

Thanks for the kind words.

The plants are doing great. I have to prune them often to keep it "civilized" in there. I had about 5 real plants when I started, but had to scale it back because I have way too much humidity. The large Pothos I had to add a taller stick into the pot because it has grown the height of the terrarium. I'm down to 3 live plants. I just figured out a method to control the humidity and it's looking really good, so I will add them back in. Also, now that Sherman is larger and I believe I have the humidity thing licked, I will be adding some back in. He's not so easy to lose in all the plants any more.

Here is a more recent picture of the plants. I was laying out "zones" for his mister and dry spots and feeding. You can see how bare it is at the bottom, and I'm OK with this as hopefully he will never be down there for very long. To keep it from being bare, I put some large foam trimmings from his wall that I made and a T-Rex skull.

I must say i really like the set up you've done or should i say the labour of love! the wall is something ive been toying with the idea for ages but never actually given ago. I had my big girly in a xl reptibreeze she was nearly 5 when passed but found viv easily filled to a degree.. issue was keeping plants alive not replacing them lol. Since then tried different types of vivs, plants & misting ideas but still i manage to kill of any type of plant! Thankfully im alot better with my chameleons! Lol sherman is simply gorgeous ive just got my 1st panther so am going to try a different set up see how it fairs this has given me a few ideas to toy with.

 

[broderp]

@MissyMoo Same here. When my Veiled cham passed (R.I.P. little buddy ) after 5 or so years, I wasn't sure I wanted another Cham. After several weeks it felt lonely and I realized I needed another one. I redid everything I had, started fresh even with my thoughts on care and husbandry. My old Cham Jackson, had all fake plants. His humidity was via a home made fogger system. I was able to get away with this as Jackson was trained to drink water from a rodent water bottle. I only needed fogging to vary his humidity.

Here is the same terrarium how it was made up for my Veiled cham named Jackson. I made the plants from branches and fake leaves from a hobby store. You can see his rodent water bottle in the upper right behind the red plant. It was more of a forest theme. I never quite like it, but it worked.

When I decided to get Sherman, I made a conscious effort to step up my game and try and entirely new approach. Mostly all live plants, a Mister, not a fogger etc.. I even changed my feeding practices and cleaning practices. Everything was rethought and it looked like a better way, I tried it.

Keep at it, I do not have a green thumb and honestly, one of my small Pothos has died. As in dried up and I can no longer see it. I took it out and forgot about it. The mister and full spectrum LED and red LEDs are really helping.

I'm no pro by any means, but everything I do is for him. My little Sherman. And it's worth it.

 

[MissyMoo]

I have my Lincoln still, but got my baby out of the blue the other week hes so far doing great, is a 1st for me with a panther.
Im thinking i shall look into lighting to stimulate plant growth maybe it will help unsure what lighting to go for but shall do some research. I know im going to adapt the viv & implement a drainage system somehow this time. Mister is great but i do seem to need to dry up after it lol.

I do think your new set up is great love quirky things added to bottom. Is hard to know what do add as always looks bare compared to rest, makes good sense way you've displayed zones to help with humidity as misting always spikes it i found hard controlling the humidity, think is why i kill off plants. So many unique vivs on here to learn from as really want to be more adventurous this time. Think i just think my vivs work & chams always done well in them but nice to improve on setups