Jannb has had a lot of veileds live past four from what I remember. The average life span for a healthy veiled is 7-8 years. It's when the care of the chameleon falters or they have bad genetics that they die before. Veileds are some of the chameleons with the worst genetics because they are factory bred and most people buy from pet stores. My male panther is already 4 and though he has had some issues the last few months he is back to being healthy and where he needs to be. It's the quality of the care that decides where the life span will go. I do not believe you should prolong a suffering chameleons life. But supposedly her chameleon is not suffering so it would now be the perfect time to prevent that. Yearly check ups aren't necessarily needed when they are younger, but if you have a good exotic vet they can catch things that you might not notice. I have had it happen. Surgery on chameleons I agree is expensive, and it's not going to simple, but this surgery would be far less dangerous than a spaying or a severely invasive procedure.
I do not agree with your beliefs just like you do not agree with mine. Maybe it's because I am merely keeping them as companions at the moment. You have the view of a breeder, and also deal with wild caughts. So your views are very skewed, you deal with high risk and very high numbers from the sounds of your posts. If you brought your chameleons in it could do more damage to them than it would to a captive bred, and it would also cost you close to thousands of dollars each time because if I remember you have close to 20 or so, not including the babies. She has one chameleon. It's totally different.
I don't even know if you ever had a chance to build the companion view of chameleon care. Did you just jump into breeding Graciliors right away? Breeders have to cut expenses I get it, and you still care for your chameleons in a good way in a my opinion. However you still fight for your chameleons more than you say in your post, you fought to keep alive the chameleon you called He Who Will Not Die. You did everything in your power to keep him alive, even when he was on deaths door. You fight for your chameleons more than you say in your posts. Yet you still advocate the breeder view. Which in my honest opinion has no place when we are talking about a companion chameleon.
Senior chameleons need to go to the vet more often because as they get older they do have more problems, such as chronic arthritis, and stuff like that. It is important to make sure to make sure they are healthy and make sure their quality of life is still good.
Breeder views in my opinion, you look at them as a way to make money even if it is to keep breeding project going. It is also to establish breeding lines in captivity. However most breeders have so many different chameleons that they don't often always get names for months, or they don't pay attention to each different personality. Though they have their favorites and they may be kept in a good situation compared to the pet store factories and stuff, it's still breeding. It's not companionship. It's totally different.
My chameleons, I have two and occasionally the ones I am rehabilitating, I notice everything that is a problem. Every time they react badly. They get different things because they like different things. I know every nuance and preference they have. They all have names, even my rehabilitation cases. I can medicate them every day if I have to. If I have a rehabilitation case, I can feed them or water them by hand every few hours. Maybe you can do that because you have a few who are sick every once in a while, but if they all got sick at once it would be impossible.
I honestly want to be a breeder, but it would maybe be only a handful of a chameleons, maybe a male and three females. And it would be of a species that needs help.
I am not picking on you either, but I don't agree with minimalistic breeder views. I never will. I will always believe life should be preserved if it can, but I have had animals my entire life, most of them rescues with debilitating illnesses that sometimes I can help and sometimes I can't. I help when I can, but when it's no longer possible and it makes no sense I put them to sleep, though sometimes it can make me extremely sad. Euthanasia is not something that should be done lightly. You are ending a life. People don't seem to get that. You are killing something no matter how nicely you do it. Why can you only murder people? Why isn't it considered murder if you kill an animal? Euthanasia is usually a thing done of mercy, usually as the thing done when there is no other hope. Chameleons are just as important as anything else in this world. This honestly why I like animals better than pretty much all people. Because humanity takes things for granted. I believe you should only kill for food and you should only euthanize if it's there is nothing else to be done and your chameleon is suffering.
And chameleons can deal with some stress in their lives. Trust me. They are stressed out in the wild regularly and they live through it. In fact they live longer in captivity even with the stress we put them through probably because there is less stress in captivity.
