Taming question

[CharlieCharmingo]

Congrats!

 

[broderp]

Thanks all. Now to to the next steps...handling. I will be content with this for some time, so there is no rush.

 

[broderp]

I've only had one cham so i may just be lucky, but with my guy he took to handfeeding in the first 2 weeks i had him, i tried to make sure my body was lower than him even if i had to crouch down. He seemed to react more confidently when looking down on me and the food. I also opened his cage up and let him get used to that. In the last month (i've only had him 2 months) i started putting a branch for him to climb from his cage to a free range i threw together. He loved the free range and would stay on it as long as i let him. Then i took away the branch for him to climb over and gently lifted him up and set him over on the free range. Now he immediately runs up my arm when i set my hand out. He gets really excited to get out of the cage.

I'm a new chameleon owner so there's a good chance that i was just lucky with him. but the free range has changed him drastically. If you can i'd suggest giving it a try.

Thanks for the post. My first Cham, Jackson, was lovable "out the box". Literally. Was never afraid of me or my kids and like yours came to me to be let out. He would go down to the very bottom of the terrarium and "wave" on the glass until let out. He was the perfect little Cham. He passed away several months ago.
Here is is when he was young "waving" to get out. (I miss him dearly still...)

I also had a female (She too has passed) She NEVER got use to me, but would tolerate me in her terrarium to clean. Here is her "tolerating me"..

My point is they were polar opposites. When I got Sherman, I was not sure which way he will turn out. I suppose I was a bit paranoid he would be like Gwenn, who liked no one. (If so, he would still be loved and cared for) He still may turn out that way, but at least he's showing very positive signs of at least allowing me near him to feed.

Free range does not work for me. Not now anyways. I have two reasons why:

• Molly - my 105 lbs 3 year old White German Shepherd/wolf Hybrid
• Mya - my 98 lbs. 3 year old wolf. (98+% pure wolf)

They are great dogs, but I would not trust them with Sherman if he was free ranging. They ignored my other Chams and completely ignore Sherman, but they do know he's in there. I don't want to take a chance at this point.

Now,my wife's pet Chinchilla and the wolf is a whole different story.... (She can't get to the Chinchilla in the ferret nation cage, and the Chinchilla ignores her completely, but Mya seems pretty hyper and excited to be around them....)

 

[jamest0o0]

sorry to hear that : / some awesome looking chams there though. Usually you hear about how grumpy veileds are.

As for free range, I can relate a bit with the pets, I have 2 crazy cats that get into EVERYTHING and think they're dogs, but luckily my cham gets a room to himself in my office/rainforest hah. Wolf dogs sound awesome, i'm jealous. Anyway Glad to see you got him hand feeding, goodluck!