Hello from Philadelphia. I've been keeping chams for 20yrs. I've never owned a wild- caught cham, but some of the offering here look tempting. Can anyone walk me through what would. We'd to be done? There are no exotic species vets nearby, so are the treatments disease or species specific? Thanks for any info and education you can give.
Wild caught, deworming, etc
- Thread starter jodeoh60
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Welcome to the forum!
If you use the Search feature and do key words wild caught and parasites, you will have LOTS of info!
CHEERS!
Nick
If you use the Search feature and do key words wild caught and parasites, you will have LOTS of info!
CHEERS!
Nick
Diseases are not the primary concerns with wild-caught chameleons, the following are the main issues that lead to death:
1. Lack of hydration; I would say all chameleons shipping in from Africa and Madagascar have either been dehydrated during the collecting, shipping middleman process. Dehydration can lead to organ failure.
2. Parasites; It would be fair to say all incoming wild-caughts carry a parasite load, some have large loads, some small amounts. These parasites can cause fatality.
3. Stress; Not all reptiles seem to be negatively affected by their surroundings, but chameleons do. Some will be able to settle in to captive life, but I believe some never do. Surely some species do better than others, and we as keepers can accommodate some of the needs to make captivity tolerable, hopefully.
4. Over-treating parasites; I would say many wild-caught have been treated incorrectly for parasites, and the result was fatality. In the 90's, we did not know what we do now about treatment.
All that being said, I am not a wild-caught practitioner, so let me give you some recent threads: Go on the SEARCH button and punch in parasites. On the first page read these 3 threads:
Chameleons and Coccida
Imported Quad/ The Survivor
Thoughts on when to aggressively treat
Happy reading.
CHEERS!
Nick
1. Lack of hydration; I would say all chameleons shipping in from Africa and Madagascar have either been dehydrated during the collecting, shipping middleman process. Dehydration can lead to organ failure.
2. Parasites; It would be fair to say all incoming wild-caughts carry a parasite load, some have large loads, some small amounts. These parasites can cause fatality.
3. Stress; Not all reptiles seem to be negatively affected by their surroundings, but chameleons do. Some will be able to settle in to captive life, but I believe some never do. Surely some species do better than others, and we as keepers can accommodate some of the needs to make captivity tolerable, hopefully.
4. Over-treating parasites; I would say many wild-caught have been treated incorrectly for parasites, and the result was fatality. In the 90's, we did not know what we do now about treatment.
All that being said, I am not a wild-caught practitioner, so let me give you some recent threads: Go on the SEARCH button and punch in parasites. On the first page read these 3 threads:
Chameleons and Coccida
Imported Quad/ The Survivor
Thoughts on when to aggressively treat
Happy reading.
CHEERS!
Nick
jajeanpierre
Chameleon Enthusiast
I'm fairly new to chameleons but purchased a group of wild caught Trioceros quadricornis. The two shipments of quads that came in recently seem to have more than their share of problems.
Nick Barta has addressed some of the issues facing someone dealing with wild caughts.
How they are cared for prior to arriving in your hands plays a huge factor in their survival rate, and that isn't something you really will ever know.
A chameleon that costs $12 in Tanzania will never get the same care by the exporter from collection to export that the adult Parsonnii will get. The $12 chameleon will likely be stuffed into a bag full of chameleons when collected and held in facilities that are inappropriate and overcrowded. So might the Parsonii, but not likely since he is simply worth too much to the exporter. If they manage to survive to export, they will arrive in the US beaten up. All those rub and bite wounds tell the story of overcrowding and major stresses.
Stress suppresses the immune system, so the parasite load that the wild caught lived in harmony with explodes.
Hydration and reducing stress are the most important things you can do for a wild caught. Unfortunately, a bout of severe dehydration which the the animal probably suffered from before export might have already damaged the kidneys and your wild caught could eventually die of kidney failure.
The enclosures of my wild caughts are so full of cover, there are some I almost never see. If you are looking for a pet to look at, you might not ever see your wild caught. I have some that happily sit out in the open, others that always hide deep in cover if I am near.
I had thought that a young captive-bred chameleon would be just as "wild" as a similarly aged wild caught since they have never been handled. How wrong I was! There is something inherently different about the struggle of a wild caught in your hands. You know they are fighting for their lives, and they are in mortal terror. When I handle my (not tame) captive breds, they might struggle as well, but it isn't the desperate fight a wild caught gives. They immediately get over it. The wild caught might look incredibly stressed for the rest of the day after medicating. I quickly learned to medicate just before lights out. It means that whenever they are handled whether to get a weight or medicate for parasites, I know I am stressing them far, far more than the same procedure would have on a captive bred.
Parasites are a problem. Because of the incredible stress these animals have been under, their parasite level explodes. Eliminating parasites might end up killing the chameleon from either the stress of treatment or the damage done by the parasites. A parasite that ends up in the gut doesn't start there. Only tapeworms have a life cycle where the animal eats them and they grow in the gut to adult worms. Parasites at different stages of their life cycle are everywhere--in the blood, in the muscles, in the heart. A common mode is to go through several stages and then end up in the lungs to be coughed up/swept up by the cilia in the respiratory system to be swallowed where they turn into adults. They pierce through intestinal walls, skin, lungs and everywhere else. Panacur doesn't seem to touch anything outside the GI tract, so eliminating parasites in the GI tract does not eliminate them from the animal--they are still floating around somewhere else in the body. That damage can be significant. It explains in part the "crash" OldChamKeeper described in the thread on the lone survivor.
To give you an idea of the parasite load a wild caught could be facing, the following was found in a fecal of one quad that has been doing very well since import in December. He had never been wormed, but was growing and looks to be flourishing.
nematodes (round worms)
flukes (vet said the flukes might be the free-birth lung worms that killed a young quad)
whip worms
flagallates
giardia
That all came out of a stool sample of an animal that was gaining weight and doing very well.
Although a wild caught is probably loaded with parasites, you do not want to treat immediately. The animal needs to get over the stresses of import, including dehydration. That isn't a one-day process. Some of the parasites can never be eradicated. I lost a 12g quad import to lung worms. The worms taken out of his lungs were as long as his lungs were (Here's a picture: https://www.chameleonforums.com/need-advice-dealing-lung-worms-138897/) He would never have survived, regardless of his treatment. I helped the vet do the necropsy--the size of the worms were incredible. Had that quad managed to cope with those lung worms and survive--and some of them will since parasites are not designed to kill the host--he would have shed them into his environment for as long as he or the parasite lived.
For a casual keeper, a wild caught is a poor choice. In the long run, they are not cheaper.
UGH! Wild-caught seems so fraught with problems. I understand the concept now of the higher price for CBB instead of WC. But now I feel like I might cough up a lung worm. This is really nasty crap. Guppies are looking better and better..............................
I will look at all those sources, but wild caught is seeming too much trouble
I will look at all those sources, but wild caught is seeming too much trouble
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