Baby Nosy Update! Panther Breeding...

[Julirs]

Ok-As always I will share the entire story with everyone. I think it is hugely important as it lets others know what to expect.

These are the baby Nosy's born starting early July 09.

Here is the story:

Chyna and Evil (WC)Bred 10/12/2008. Chyna about 1.5+ years old when bred-this was her second breeding as she was bred by the breeder I got her from. Evil about a year old. I still have them. They are HUGE beautiful Panthers enjoying the FLorida sunshine!

First clutch laid 11/10-27 perfect white calcified eggs.
Second clutch laid 1/13/09 (retained-not re-bred) 36 eggs.

Post from 7/22/09: There are now 14 baby Nosy's with the oldest one being a week old! 6 eggs left to hatch!
Post from 8/25/09:Well-It has been interesting. Out of the first 14 that hatched from the first clutch-only 3 survived. And those 3 are thriving and coloring up. The 11 went down hill quickly and survived at the most for a week and a few days. 3 Neos from that clutch even prolapsed-and i consulted several MAJOR breeders that have never known this to happen. They did not move around much, and ended up keeping eyes closed. The first 3 are now approaching 6 weeks. The second clutch started hatching about 3 weeks after the first. That clutch was laid 60 days after the first, the eggs were bigger and there were more of them. There are now 6 babies hatched, eating, and running around the baby bin from the second clutch. They are bigger and more active. There are still 4 eggs from the first clutch, and 20 from the second clutch that are sweating and hatching every few days. I will keep everyone posted.
Today 11/05/2009: OK-The 3 from the first clutch are doing wonderfully-one of the bad sisters chewed the end of the males tail off. They are now almost 4 months old. There are actually 4 eggs still incubating, that look good from this clutch.
The male:

Females:

There are 7 survivors from the retained clutch-5 females and 2 males. There are 3 eggs still incubating. These guys and gals are from 2-3 months old.

Males:

Females:

Pretty disappointing to get 10 babies out of a breeding that yielded 2 clutches with a total of 63 eggs-especially after my 69/69 hatch rate of Veileds last year-but Veileds are easier. I am surrounded by those that I consider the best breeders and am getting the best advice and in turn share it all with you. All of the breeders say you will get weak clutches, and you may not ever know the reason. These are WC Panthers, and even though they are getting the best care here, we do not know what happened in their early lives.
Morale of the story-there will be disappointment. Take super good care of your females BEFORE breeding.

 

[Julirs]

Evil-WC male (Father of above babies).
When I got him-pretty rough looking fellow! They often come in very green.

Today

Chyna-WC female (Mother of above babies). Does she not have one huge beast of a head? Thus she is named after the pro-wrestler Chyna!

When I first got her:

Today:

 

[jannb]

Julie; Thank you for sharing this. Maybe it will make some of these new owners think twice before rushing into breeding. From Lizbeth's experience in breeding panthers....they are very hard to keep alive. To me it's so sad that the babies are always dying off. She's doing everything right....they just seem to be weak. She's also had tons of vet bills with this hobby from surgeries to all kinds of meds. She's getting ready to go away to grad school and hopefully stop breeding for awhile. I don't think allot of people realize what they are getting into. Another thing it seems that the baby panthers bite off the tails more often that the veileds. She always has the nip tailed ones.

 

[Warrix642]

Good information please keep us posted if you find anything else out...

 

[tkilgour]

Good luck with those babies. You are so right Jann, breeding these guys can be expensive and stressful. It is so sad when a little, cute, baby dies, and heartbreaking when you lose an adult. Vet bills can add up quickly when a complication pops up, and sometimes no matter how perfect your husbandry is something can always happen.

 

[warpdrive]

Julie,

thank you so much for telling us this story.
as someone who is planing on breeding, I'm well aware of the ups and downs that can happen. yet your story reminds us that when things do go wrong they can go very wrong.

it also reminds me that when breeding, that almost everything relys on making sure we take extra care of our females because the babys that are produced depend on it. I would even go so far as to say that it doesn't just depend on the female in question, but also her parents...that's when the possable health and well being of the babys in question start.
in other words, while I'm sure you are heartbroken over alot of the deaths that you had to watch, alot of the babys health and well being is not in our hands.

once again, I want to thank you for reminding me just how hard breeding can be.

Harry

 

[jessica]

As some one new to chameleons I just wanted to thank you for this post, I am trying to learn as much as I can. This is an eye opener to not just jump into breeding without thinking it through.

 

[Pure]

Being that these are Noseys and WC at that, I have to wonder if they may be genetically too close to be allowed to breed. The problems (weak clutch) you've described does sound like poor genetics. Breeding them together again will tell you if this is true or not.

Have any of the breeders you've spoken too about this mentioned this as maybe an issue? I'm just curious about these things by nature.

Thanks for posting this and good luck next go round.

 

[warpdrive]

Being that these are Noseys and WC at that, I have to wonder if they may be genetically too close to be allowed to breed. The problems (weak clutch) you've described does sound like poor genetics. Breeding them together again will tell you if this is true or not.

you make a great point Pure.

while the chances of two WC panthers being related should not be realistic, you have to wonder if they were captured when they were young, they may not have had enough time to disperse and set up their own territorys yet.
in fact, if very young when caught, they might have been in the same tree at the time of capture.

while another breeding attempt between the two would be the best way to see if they are related and the reason behind this, I feel that breeding this female with another male would be a better way to at least hope to get better results of heathy babys...
let's face it, why even breed this female, and give her more stress as a result, without at least trying to get the most healthy of offspring?

then again, the results of the current babys could well be just from an ungodly bad and stressful capture and shipping, regardless that she may be healthy and strong right now.

no matter what the reason, again you bring up a great point there Pure.

Harry

 

[hallenhe]

Thanks for sharing - I appreciate your detailed breakdowns of all aspects of the process (both here and with the veileds, last year). That tail-nipped male is one handsome fellow!

 

[Julirs]

Being that these are Noseys and WC at that, I have to wonder if they may be genetically too close to be allowed to breed. The problems (weak clutch) you've described does sound like poor genetics. Breeding them together again will tell you if this is true or not.

Have any of the breeders you've spoken too about this mentioned this as maybe an issue? I'm just curious about these things by nature.

Thanks for posting this and good luck next go round.

The female came into the country long before the male, so I am highly doubting genetic issues due to being related are at fault. Of course one has to suspect genetic issues of other sorts could be at fault.

 

[Pure]

Sorry, things move so fast on this site..I ask or bring up a lot of things and don't get a chance to respond cause they have moved out of the main point of view to fast...

What I was really getting at has little to do with them being related due to being captured in the same tree. It has more to do with Nosy be being such a small isolated island that inbreeding is obviously going to be a fact of life. As captives...we here in the US can ensure we try to mix blood up as much as possible. The animals themselves in the wild do not have this luxury. And in all honesty...what you describes as happening does sound like a genetic deficiency. Juli, please take no offense to what I'm saying, as a matter of fact, I would love to have one of your babies. I'm just bringing up a topic for discussion that does indeed have some merit.

I would really really love to hear what some of the experts like Mike or Chris have to say on the matter.

 

[Chris Anderson]

Nosy Be may be an island but its approximately 120 square miles. An island this size is more than capable of having a genetically viable chameleon population. Considering how long F. pardalis has lived on the island and how many viable captive clutches have been born over the years from this locale, I highly doubt it is a genetics issue.

Of course, you could theoretically determine whether the population was genetically diverse enough to sustain itself or not. You'd need to do population studies to estimate the total population size. Then you could estimate the genetic variation in the population and based on mutation rates, etc., you could calculate the size of a population you would need to have a population that was sufficiently genetically diverse. By comparing this estimate with the population estimate you could make a prediction but I don't see anything to indicate you would find the population wasn't completely viable.

There are so many factors that could cause a weak clutch. You have nutritional, immune, hormonal, and other inputs to the clutch from the mother which could be out of whack for any number of reasons but still have an outwardly healthy mother. Incubation issues such as moisture or temp fluctuations could weaken the neonates. Of course there is always the possibility that something in raising the babies was a problem. There are a lot of things that could have happened and many of them would be very difficult for even the most experienced keepers to detect and prevent.

Chris

 

[Pure]

Ah yes...wile a hundred and twenty plus squar miles sounds very large...and indeed it is...Chams being the type of animal that don't tend to travel great distances. Meaning if things needed for survival, are provided close to their location, they seldom travel great distances. If you calculate that into this equation, then what do you come up with?

Most cham species are not known for their nomadic lifestyles, please correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge only one desert species of chameleon is known for their habit of traveling great distance. This hypothesis, would point to inbreeding issues in pretty much all species of chameleon, and may also shed some light on conundrums of other species outside of Nosey Be having issues with weak clutches. Not to say there are not other factors in play. I totally agree with what you said on this. But I also feel it somewhat...umm...how...to...put...this...is...short sighted (BIG?) to discount inbreeding as being an issue.

That may not be the best way to put it...but I am not as literally good at expressing such things....but hell man, I try!

 

[Chris Anderson]

Even with species that do not travel great distances or disperse far after birth there is still genetic drift by virtue of the fact that the range a single clutch ends up extending over is going to overlap with other clutches that in turn overlap with other clutches, etc. What you end up with is diverse genetics traveling over large distances and mixing considerably over the period of many generations. If you are only thinking about genetic drift in the terms of one or two generations, its easy to mistakenly assume that there is not going to be a high degree of exchange but species and populations like this are exchanging genetics and their genes are mutating over a period of hundreds of thousands of years or more depending on the history of the locale.

Chris

 

[Pure]

Indeed... I see your point for sure. Please don't take my remarks as "my thoughts on the law of genetics" I'm just very curious to hear (read) your thoughts on this....as even you can't say my thoughts are preposterous. As far fetched as they may be......It's still very possible...

And is it just me or do the panther species seem to have more genetic "quams" over any other species. hmmmm

I do, very much so, see your point. but I can't help but think that this can't be discounted, or ruled out as impossible.

Just more as a food for thought type of thing.

We've all seen or at least heard of weak clutches. I've yet to do any breeding myself or any sort of study... But this still has "some" merit.

 

[Chris Anderson]

In the wild there is absolutely no support for the idea that they are experiencing weak clutches and if it wasn't for our interference with their habitats and populations, they would be fine. Weak clutches when we try to breed them in captivity are the result of what we do to the animals and their clutches while they are captive. Chameleons have survived in the wild without our interference for millions of years without an issue. I honestly do not see any reason to suspect that a population of panther chameleons living on 120 square miles of land is genetically deficient.

Heck, all we have to do is look at the stress of being in captivity to find a more plausible explanation for weak clutches. In captivity we merely approximate their care into parameters we are able to replicate easily and which they seem to be able to maintain themselves at. We can't replicate their natural habitat, diet, etc., perfectly and animals naturally experience a stress response to perturbations in their environment. Stress causes the release of stress hormones (glucocorticoids) such as corticosterone (CORT). Glucocorticoids tend to counter stress in a number of ways but one is their immunosuppressive effects. This isn't new, we all know that stressed animals are more susceptible to illness. What you may not know, however, is that females can pass CORT levels onto their fetuses causing the new offspring to have high CORT levels and thus, suffer from immunosuppressive effects that would make them more susceptible to illnesses. Since larger animals are more able to cope with variations outside of their preferred habitat specificity range then smaller animals, adults may be able to maintain themselves but neonates are already less able to cope with our inability to perfectly replicate conditions and high maternally passed on CORT levels would further increase susceptibility to illness because of the immunosuppressive effects and easily cause increased mortality.

Chris

 

[Pure]

Very well put, thank you....

 

[Nosybe]

This has turned into a very interesting and complex thread. I like it!