this may be a stupid question but im just wandering

[chelsie]

can u keep a male and female cham in the same cage once there ok and like each other? my cham is a female she is no where near being ready to mate but i was just thinking

 

[Thompson]

No you cannot. They will probably mate once she is ready and when she lays, she may become eggbound because a there is a male wanting to breed with her all the time and she will not have any privacy to lay her eggs. Not to mention all the fighting that will happen once she's unreceptive.

 

[mbondy]

You mean while they breed? As long as the female doesn't seem to be stressed and has her peachy, ready to breed, colors. I wouldn't leave them unsupervised, I've heard some awful stories where people just left their chams for a few minutes and came back to a dead female. I wouldn't leave her there permanetely if that's what you mean.

 

[chelsie]

ok thank you well shes not old enough to mate shes around 3 to 4 months and i dont have a male yet and wont get one for awhile but i was just curious

 

[hbskeet]

It actually depends on the type of chams. I keep my Pygmies and Dwarfs in little breeding colonies. My brevs and temps do just fine. My Rudis were fine as a 1.2 trio. I had a heavily planted cage and the male was young and smaller than the girls. Once they mated the girls pretty much punked him and stayed on one side of the cage together while he pretty much kept to himself but still wondered around. I never had a problem housing them together. I just traded my male away though but since my one of my girls in gravid it's ok. I still have access them him though when I'm ready to mate my other girl. I must say that this is only ok with experience. And if you ever house a colony make sure you hvae at least a trio not just a pair bc once a female is gravid she will refuse the male in her area and it gives the male another female to chase after, so the gravid one isn't always stressed.

 

[Elizadolots]

It does depend on the chameleon and truthfully, if you have enough space, you could probably make it work for any standard breed. However, if you do not have really small chameleons, it's almost certainly easier to separate them. They need to be able to get away from each other completely. I mean, they need to not see each other. That's far easier to achieve when they are in separate enclosures.

It's not a definitive thing. I've seen posts here about veiled and jackson's chameleons living in groups without problems for many years, so I know it can be done. But, in every case, there was a lot of space involved.