Starting to Hiss

[Campy]

my cham is starting to hiss at me now . lil bastard . so . anything i can do to get him to trust me? it's a veild cham . and next question is... i gotta clean his cage today... so how do i get him out? just toughen up and grab him? does it hurt when they bite?

thanks .

he's about... 3-4 months old.. not very big .

 

[ChameleonsTree]

You can clean his cage after he goes to sleep. Even if he does open his eyes he wont be awake enough usually to attack. Now if you want to try hand feeding him worms he may start to associate you with something good. I may work...it may not.

 

[Campy]

i have tried this with crickets . but he tends to just lean away from me on the branch . at one time . he actually fell off the branch... so i dunno . :-s

 

[kinyonga]

To get him out of the cage, try holding a branch in front of him (move slowly) and encouraging him to move forward onto it by approaching him slowly from the back with your other hand. You can then remove him and the branch from the cage.

I don't recommend grabbing him and removing him...that won't lead to trusting you for sure.

Are you holding the crickets above him or level with him and in front of him when you try to get him to eat them? Sometimes it makes a difference.

 

[pittbulldog]

I had the same problem with my Panther at around 6 months or so. He's calmed down in the last month or so. When I took him out of his cage to move him to the bigger one, I put my hand underneath of the branch that he was on, and used my thumb to get him to climb out on it. He didn't seem to mind too much.

 

[Stuey!]

i have the same problem. i tried to hand feed him with wax worms but he wouldnt take it. hes never bit me...im gonna try and hand feed him with mealworms he might not just like waxworms

 

[ChameleonsTree]

Try a superworm...they move more and they are attracted to the movement.

 

[Stuey!]

alright ill see if my local pet store has any im sure they do

 

[Scrappy]

Stuey is a little guy still so just be careful of the size of the worm.

 

[Zerah Morris]

Your best bet is to glove your hand. In addition to the obvious protection, the glove also disguises your hand. My more aggressive chams can rip chunks of skin from you, but with the glove they just hiss in the direction of my eyes like they do not recognize the glove as me. Not so bad as long as they do not ever achieve a strike. Use the ungloved hand to "herd" the cham to perch on the gloved hand.

And yes it hurts when they bite, even very small/young chams can give a nasty bite. Extremely strong species like the parsonii make you want to toss them at walls when they bite, but 2000$ is a immediate deterrent against this reaction!

 

[Campy]

well . i realized that he only hissed at me because he felt he was in danger IMO.... tell me what u think... when he was hissing was when he was climbing the side of the screened cage... all fours on it... so maybe he felt scared cause he didn't want to fall... when he is on a branch he doesn't hiss at all . . aww I love my lil guy . haha . he's pretty much my son ... that i dont want ... (real kid)