time to breed

mardithepanther

mardithepanther

New Member
i have some breeding questions. is breeding hard? would i have enough time if im not home for six hours. is it a profit if i build my own cages and breed my own food? how quick do they sell? what can i get for ambilobes? what petstores will take them? what is the mortality rate? please feel free to ask me questions
 
Breeding is quite time consuming and expensive. I find panthers more difficult to breed than veileds. I would get a couple of years experience with chameleons before you start to breed.
 
It is in fact A LOT OF WORK.
Over the summer of this year i raised 40 baby veiled chameleons for 3-4 months.
They ate 3 times a day and had to be misted 3 times a day. I had to always buy 2 thousand or more crickets a week! Plus all the bins, lights, and foliage for them. You will also go threw A LOT of paper towels if you do have babies and manage to hatch them out. Many people think they will make a lot of money from raising and selling off their chameleons. Thats really not the case.

I am 13 years old and i managed to do it with a lot of help from a local forum member and my parents support. It was a very fun and exciting experience but they required a LOT of work. Basically its the same routine for their lives until they are ready to be sold. And as they get older you MUST separate the smaller chameleons from the larger ones as this will cause many complications.

I know you haven't breed your chameleons yet but im just giving you some ideas on how it will be if you actually do breed and have babies that you will take care for. And the hardest part is trying to find people to buy them as they get older and are ready to be sent to homes. I thought it would be easy finding homes....but it is really not. If you are in fact gonna be a caring breeder you will try to find the best homes for the chameleons and that will make your job a bit more difficult as many breeders will contact you wanting to buy in bulk.

Im trying to say it is a hard job to do. It doesnt matter if you want to but it does matter if YOU CAN do it for sure. If you are up for all the time and requirements the chameleons will need..go for it and we will be here to help you. If not...its not problem of waiting until the right time and moment comes.

Hope this helps
 
Well, if you're looking for a quick one time profit, you're not gonna get it. If you're looking for the experience of breeding, pop all but a few of the eggs so you aren't overwhelmed with babies. Don't forget that each female who is bred can end up making you up to 3 fertile clutches, meaning you may have 100+ eggs. It also shortens the life of the female, especially if she isn't given the proper nutrition during gestation.

You probably won't get too much for the babies. You aren't a big reputable breeder. If they don't sell you loose even more money because you have to start individually housing each animal. And, you could potentially end up with a whole clutch of girls, which are even harder to sell if you don't have a reputation and/or amazing bloodlines.
 
CleaTheChameleon said:
It is in fact A LOT OF WORK.
Over the summer of this year i raised 40 baby veiled chameleons for 3-4 months.
They ate 3 times a day and had to be misted 3 times a day. I had to always buy 2 thousand or more crickets a week! Plus all the bins, lights, and foliage for them. You will also go threw A LOT of paper towels if you do have babies and manage to hatch them out. Many people think they will make a lot of money from raising and selling off their chameleons. Thats really not the case.

I am 13 years old and i managed to do it with a lot of help from a local forum member and my parents support. It was a very fun and exciting experience but they required a LOT of work. Basically its the same routine for their lives until they are ready to be sold. And as they get older you MUST separate the smaller chameleons from the larger ones as this will cause many complications.

I know you haven't breed your chameleons yet but im just giving you some ideas on how it will be if you actually do breed and have babies that you will take care for. And the hardest part is trying to find people to buy them as they get older and are ready to be sent to homes. I thought it would be easy finding homes....but it is really not. If you are in fact gonna be a caring breeder you will try to find the best homes for the chameleons and that will make your job a bit more difficult as many breeders will contact you wanting to buy in bulk.

Im trying to say it is a hard job to do. It doesnt matter if you want to but it does matter if YOU CAN do it for sure. If you are up for all the time and requirements the chameleons will need..go for it and we will be here to help you. If not...its not problem of waiting until the right time and moment comes.

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

wow! I am very impressed. It is hard to believe that you are 13!!!!!
 
I too am 13. the only profit I need is to sustain my babies and the experience of breeding. I love Chams and I would love to breed. I have all of the info How to but I need to know if i will be able to. If i dedicate my self to it even with school 6 hours a day will i be able to? I can have people mist and feed when I am not around.
 
*IF* you do decide to go through with it, I would coordinate it so you can more or less expect the hatchdate around your summer break. That gives you a great 3 month margin to really take care of them and enjoy the experience. Because it feels to me like if you have to miss 2/3 of the day with the babies it's not really worth it. Commit completely or not at all, I think. You only have 3-4 months to enjoy them if you can get them all homes, it's a shame to miss it because of school and homework.
 
mardithepanther said:
I too am 13. the only profit I need is to sustain my babies and the experience of breeding. I love Chams and I would love to breed. I have all of the info How to but I need to know if i will be able to. If i dedicate my self to it even with school 6 hours a day will i be able to? I can have people mist and feed when I am not around.
Click to expand...

I would suggest you wait until you master simple husbandry skills first. I'm not saying you don't care for your chameleon, it's just that you have been caring for it for a month. I have a few suggestions first, like a checklist to accomplish. Also, I feel if you can arrange it for the summer, it'd be best, but if you are willing to give up a ton of time during the school year, go for it.

First: Keep caring for the one you have
Second: After about 5-6 months from now, consider purchasing a female*
Third: After getting the female, make sure she is the appropriate age to breed(about one year of age)
Fourth: Reconsider breeding, if you are willing to raise babies still

*When I say consider purchasing a female, do some more research, learn what comes along with a female, besides her good looks for the male :rolleyes:.
 
The "cost of raising 69 baby veileds" thread really cannot be compared to breeding panthers. Veileds cost a whole 35$ when panthers easily sell for 100$ plus. If you cannot AT LEAST break even raising each clutch of panthers then you are doing something wrong. Even with caging, buying all your feeders etc. Panthers are easy to breed, easy to raise babies and easy to sell them all off (at least for the clutches I have hatched). It was a different story for me with the K. tavetana and Tr. ellioti babies. Animals that grow slow but eat the same amount, need sold at older ages and do not sell as much as panthers can be difficult to break even. The babies of other species are much harder to grow and much higher mortality rate make it very difficult along with the price they are sold at. I know I didnt break even with any of my other animals besides panthers. Although my friends/good homes have them so I sold them for great prices, IMO. I think this hobby is bass ackwards when it comes to prices but that is just me.

About not being there for school/work during the day is no problem. You dont have to sit and watch them, burp them, change diapers etc like a human baby. I have raised panthers and tavetana while working. Making sure they drink the 2 or 3 times they are watered and keeping up humidity is plenty good enough for hydration. Feed them one good time a day and toss in some extras. It really isnt as time consuming as people make it out to be.

I do have to agree with waiting until you have plenty of experience before trying to breed chameleons.
 
Olimpia also made a great point on timing out clutches to hatch while you are not so busy. Although females do produce fertile eggs multiple times after being bred once. There is a few ways to get around that though. One would be to discard clutches that wont hatch during the non busy part of your life. ALthough it is a waste on the female IMO. The other would be to maybe sell or give whole clutches to a friend or someone near you that has experience. You can ask for a few animals after they hatch and are grown a bit for payment also.
 
thank you soo much Olimpia and Cainschams. I will plan it so I have the babies during the summer. I also built 1 cage for my babies and it cost nothing to me. I am also breeding my own crix so i hope that will lower the cost drastically. :)
 
mardithepanther said:
I too am 13. the only profit I need is to sustain my babies and the experience of breeding. I love Chams and I would love to breed. I have all of the info How to but I need to know if i will be able to. If i dedicate my self to it even with school 6 hours a day will i be able to? I can have people mist and feed when I am not around.
Click to expand...

What you need is not what you think...

You need to do your homework first and know just what you are getting into. Sadly this seems to not have been done yet, and I'll bet that you didn't read the links provided to you as well.

Forget the word profit in your above reply as you'll need what is called an investment of at least $1000 if not triple that since you have no clue just what you are getting into.
Do you have a grand of your own money right now?

You say you don't have the time. Are you sure the people who are willing to help have any idea just what they are getting into and how do you know that they will do a good enough job to keep them alive?
Personally, I wouldn't count on anyone's help as the more you do, the more they will let you down.
So you are going to breed your feeders for them? Cool, you'll need to have enough space to house 100,000,000 crickets, and 100,000 silkies...let's add in a few manted projects while we are at it as well. Let's not forget all the fruitfly cups you'll need to start with...are they all going to be housed in your bedroom? Because mommy and daddy won't want the noise from the crickets in their room.

Want me to keep going?

I say go for it. It will teach you to never start a project with out doing the research first.

Harry
 
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