verrucosus chameleon or oustalet?

[maxttu]

As y'all may or may not know, I lost my lil Maynard last wknd. I'm not necessarily ready to pull the trigger on another Cham (still grieving), but there's a shop in town that has ousties and verrucosus in stock.

I haven't seen them but was wondering which of the two would you go with? Pros? Cons? Experience level? Etc?

With just the lil research that I've done, there doesn't appear to be a great amount of info on them. I have searched the forum and found some threads of interest.

I'm just fishing for opinions and takes from y'all. Please and thanks!

 

[fluxlizard]

In my experience, oustalets are much easier to care for and easier to breed.
They are a better "pet" too- much less shy and less likely to stress.
They are available sometimes as captive bred as well. Verrocusus are very rarely available as CB - almost never.
A big male oustalets is a really neat lizard, IMO. Cool spines and warty skin- awesome texture and pleasing color in a really big chameleon.

 

[Miss Machine]

Hi Maxttu,

I have both species. The care for both species is pretty much the same. Both of my animals are wild caught. The slight differences i can tell you about is the level of shyness. My male verrucosus is much more shy than my male oustalets.

I house my oustalets in a full screen enclosure and my verrucosus in a well ventilated glass enclosure. Now the measurements of both enclosures are 24x24x48 but 2 new screen enclosures are ready to be made and will be a lot bigger.

I use Reptisun tubelight 5.0 for my verrucosus, a 60 watt heating bulb (temp 100f directly under it) and daylight compact lamp. For my oustalets I use the same wattage in heating bulb and I use a Powersun 100 watt UV source. Misting sessions of about 5 minutes two times a day and i use a dripper for additional watering. Both are ready eaters and prefer large insects like roaches, hoppers and superworms. I also feed babymice once every two months. I also feed well gutloaded crickets, butterworms and silkworms. All my enclosures are heavily planted with Ficus, Pothos and Calathea.

Hope this helps a bit!

 

[maxttu]

Very good info! These guys require lots of heat and water from what I'm reading! I hope to take a look at these guys in the next day or so. How concerned should I be that they are more than likely WC? Supposedly they are young juvies, approx 8-10" long...what would a guesstimate on age be with the given size

 

[Miss Machine]

Well since both species eat like pigs, specially the first year, they grow fast. I bought my two guys at the local pet shop, where they arrived when aprox. two months old and they are about 4 inch big. The size you mention, i think they would be about 6 months or so. I kept a close eye on them in the store and bought mine when they were about that size, so 6 to 7 months.

I didn't have a problem with them being WC. Both are perfectly healthy animals, never needed to treat them for parasites.. But it's wise to do a fecal. And of course the outcome is that they have parasites, but medical treatment is not always necessary.

About the watering, they like to drink, but they live under much dryer and various circumstances in the wild, especially verrucosus (for example spiny hot and dry forests in the south of Madagascar). Of course there is no need to keep it that dry in captivity, but if you offer them a good watering session once or twice a day its fine.

 

[maxttu]

I'm thinking that of the two I'm leaning more towards the oustie. I'm also on Seeco's waiting list for his Multi Kinyongia. Man, decisions, decisions...never thought that I'd be in this position. I was happy w/lil Maynard.

 

[Miss Machine]

Well, good luck with making a decision! I have no Kinyongia experience, so can't tell you anything 'bout them. ;-)

 

[maxttu]

Fwiw, I went to the store and they "claimed" that the one oustie and the 5 verrucosus were not WC. Said something about farm-raised. The oustie was bigger than I expected, but not adult and the verrucosus were well under a year, IMHO...