A few chameleons from my collection...

[BackwaterReptiles]

Baby ch female Oustalet's (future breeder we hope)...

Female Werner's...

Gravid Jewelled (bred here, laid a clutch of 21 eggs)...

Young Parson's...

A couple Carpet's mating (laid 19 eggs 25 days later)...

Fairly young male Ambanja (future breeder we hope)...

Our top Veiled male breeder (has fathered many clutches)...

 

[xcrystalx]

you have a lovely cham family

 

[MelissaB]

Beautiful pics and chameleons! I had to laugh at the peeping cricket in the photo of the carpets mating.

 

[kameleons jvo]

Nice collection and very beautiful animals

 

[LLGabriel]

Beautiful collection! The Ambanja has such pretty blues so far.

 

[NHenn]

What an amazing collection! Congratulations on all the successful breeding and laying, especially the Campani awesome job!

 

[Psychobunny]

Outstanding collection of chams.
They are all beautiful specimens

 

[Juliaf3]

Such a fantastic group of chams! I love them all!

 

[carol5208]

You have a gorgeous collection!! And yeah, the cricket is getting a close up view of some cham porn! Lol

 

[showjet95]

Nice first post! you have some really nice chams, and nice variety

 

[Olimpia]

Very nice!

 

[BackwaterReptiles]

Thanks for the kind and positive feedback everyone, I really appreciate it!

Chams are enchanting animals that have me fully captivated. After lurking for a couple years, I figured I'd join the forum and start sharing experiences, pictures, etc.

Olimpia - Love your site, have been there many times

NHenn - Thank you regarding the campani breeding. In the end, it was bittersweet. She was a reluctant layer, even when she looked like she was going to pop. Laying that large clutch was extremely tough on her, and she didn't last two days afterwards--just never recovered. I have video of her pushing and pushing, trying to expel the eggs. It was tough to watch. She didn't seem to like my usual laying bin, as I had put her into it three separate times before she agreed to lay her eggs. I had kept a small laying bin inside the cage as well, but she never did attempt to dig in it.

 

[NHenn]

Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that. We just had the exact same scenario happen to us. Her clutch was not as big but near the end of her gestation we could tell her health was slowly diminishing and after a long refusal to lay she finally did without digging at all and passed away a few days after

How are the eggs currently looking?

 

[BackwaterReptiles]

Very, very interesting--I'm absolutely fascinated that you had the same experience. I'm going to give this some real thought, as this changes everything. I had no idea it may be a common occurrence.

Interestingly enough, she never did dig--completely refused. She just started laying them on the surface of the sand/peat. Fortunately I was watching her when it started.

I would collect the eggs as she laid, but it was a slow and arduous process for her--maybe one egg per 10 minutes, and one of them was three eggs combined into one--not just stuck together, they literally formed one egg (basically a "siamese" egg, if that visual helps), but it was obviously comprised of three. How she passed that one I have no idea. I put it into the incubation media as a super longshot but it was of course no good.

I opened her up after she passed and she had four more malformed eggs in her, smaller and much more round than the "normal" eggs.

After all is said and done, I have just six eggs that look promising. The rest don't look promising.

 

[frankpayne32]

Wow that is a lot of eggs for a little chameleon. I currently have one gravid female. I hope I don't have the same problem...

Great pics and best of luck with the campani eggs.

 

[NHenn]

I felt the same way reading your post. I was assuming something just went wrong during her egg development but maybe there is more going on behind the scenes.

I lost most of her eggs as well despite them looking fairly healthy. They do have more of a yellow tint to them than I was expecting. There are 3 remaining that haven't molded over and are looking good so far but I don't have my hopes up just yet.