Yogg needs some poopin advice. :}

[SpinyFranky]

The phrase " you are what you eat" comes to mind here.....


from what I understand, a chameleon on a diet of crickets + meal worms + super worms is not going to have the nicest smelling poo....

Mine are mainly on a cricket diet ( waiting for those dang dubias to hit the 500 count point..... ) and most of the time the poo.... is not all that pleasant smelling.

Since all cham cages are in my room... im usually around to smell when a "fresh one" has been put out... however some times I notice no odor at all. However when I pick up said poo upon closer examination is most usually smells...

can you describe the smell? rotten eggs? fishy? ...... the more we know the better we can help.

Though mealworms are known to cause impaction.... im not sure they would also lead to bad smelling poo because the poo sits in the chameleon so long...... I would think its more like meal worms and crickets and supers are just dirty things by nature and thus smell nasty....

Prime example was a friend who had a sugar glider.... well he had three... but still...


For a majority of the time he had them he fed them crickets... and when those little guys would run around and be active - they stunk, like... the dirty animal smell.

However he alter switched them onto a diet of mainly fresh veggies ( I have no clue as to specifics ) and only gave crickets sparingly.... and I admit after that they certainly began to smell different.... the little guys had this "sugary" smell to them.

Perhaps and I believe the same might apply to your chameleons poo.

 

[Dave Weldon]

...so i get there and get a float done and the reults are negative....

Howdy,

Besides doing a fecal float, did they also do a fecal smear? A float is great for concentrating eggs in the sample but usually kills-off the swimmers like various flagellate and protozoan buggers. If you can't see them swimming, it's super-tough to spot them. A smear is when you take a wet q-tip and mash it into the sample to bring away enough to make a soupy drop on a slide. You put a slide cover on top of that drop and then take a look under the microscope. I did several of those yesterday with a fellow keeper's chameleon poop samples and we had lots of fun photographing and videoing the swimmers.

Parasites don't necessarily guarantee stinky poop. A bacterial bloom could also make it stinky. The bacteria don't necessarily have to be bad bacteria either. Generally speaking, a healthy chameleon's poop doesn't stink but stinky poop isn't a sure sign of an unhealthy chameleon o). For example, one might be able to make an argument that improper temps could slow down the digestive processes leaving the material to ferment in digestive tract, creating stinky poop.