Tounge issue

[Fireborn]

Chameleon Info:

• Your Chameleon - Velied chameleon, female, in my care for almost 3 years. Approx 3 years old
• Handling - Rarely. Sometimes to take her outside during the nice summer days.
• Feeding - crickets, super worms, butter worms, bsfl, and sometimes wax worms as treats. Dusting with plain calcium every feeding. Alternating between multi vit and d3 once a week.
• Supplements - Arcadia plain calcium, rapashi calcium multi vit, reptical with d3.
• Watering - hand mist 3 times a day for a minute. I give her a good long mist once a week where I use a whole bottle. I've seen her drink often. Home made dripper filled once a day.
• Fecal Description - normal brown with white urate (haven't seen a poop for a week now)
• History - got her from a petsmart when she was a juvenile.

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - xl reptibreeze 2x4
• Lighting - fairly new 10.0 zoomed t5 and a 75 w heat bulb
• Temperature - Ambient temp 22-23 with a basking spot 26-28c
• Humidity - 50% spikes to 80% when misting.
• Plants - Pothos, palm, umbrella plant
• Placement - In my reptile room which is pretty low traffic. Cage is on the floor.
• Location - Canada

Current Problem -after she laid a clutch which took her more time than normal to dig She started having issues with her tounge not sticking on the first shot but would get it on th second shot. Now yesterday her tounge is not sticking at all. She seems very frustrated with it but is hungry enough she will let me put the bug in her mouth. I'm planning to take her to the vet next week but I want to know hopefully a little bit of what's going on first as the vets here aren't the most skilled with reptiles. I've noticed her tounge has some little discolouration and if I get a chance I will take a picture. She's always been really healthy until this last clutch which was unusually small and the eggs were smaller as well.

 

[Fireborn]

Forgot to mention she laid the clutch jun 22

 

[kinyonga]

Does she always slouchnon your hand or other surfaces or does she stand up tall on her legs? Can you please post a couple more recent photos?

 

[Fireborn]

She tries to hide from the camera. I was stopping her from shimmying to the other side of my hand so I could get a picture.

 

[kinyonga]

So when she walks she stands high on her legs with her body off the ground?

 

[Fireborn]

Yeah

 

[kinyonga]

It might be that she needs a little extra calcium after laying her eggs but in my experience that has never been a cause for the tongue to not be sticky....but it won't hurt. Is it possible she bit her tongue or she got it caught on something?

 

[Fireborn]

Maybe. I do usually free range the feeders.

 

[jajeanpierre]

She looks terribly dehydrated.

Calcium deficiencies can cause tongue issues. I've had a chameleon not be able to use her tongue properly shortly after laying eggs, but with liquid calcium (from the vet), she recovered in a few hours.

Laying eggs--the physical effort--depletes calcium.

Get her hydrated and increase her calcium.

 

[Fireborn]

How can I better hydrate her aside from misting and dripper? She was digging for a week and I was thinking that might have been the case.

 

[Fireborn]

Also managed to get a picture while she was walking around in her cage.

 

[jajeanpierre]

How can I better hydrate her aside from misting and dripper? She was digging for a week and I was thinking that might have been the case.

This is when an automatic mister is so helpful. Run the mister for hours at a time. Chameleons need high humidity to keep from dehydrating.

After my females lay, I run misters for 20 minutes at a time for a couple of days and that is for the females that bounce back really well.

 

[Fireborn]

Yeah I'm thinking it's time to invest in one. I've never had these problems with her before but she's my baby and I want her to live a full happy life. On the plus side she was able to stick her tounge to some worms today.