Blind cowboy

Jono

Jono

New Member
Hi

I have a 10month old male veiled who is happy and very healthy but about a month and a half ago he suddenly started missing his food. It definitely seems to be a mechanical problem such as a ligament or muscle, not a deficiency or mouth rot of syphilis or anything those other slutty chams get.

I live in Cape Town, 5th floor apartment right on the beach and he lives on my balcony in a big bushy ficus and in a smaller ficus inside with a night lamp when the weather is bad. I dont have any UV lights because he has access to direct sunlight from 10am till sunset 10 days out of 12. He has a very strong grip and a well built skeleton. He is VERY active chameleon after his morning sun and spends his days exploring the balcony pot plants and on the climbing frame I made for him.

I noticed him missing with his tongue immediately as I feed him the first cricket by hand before I let the rest loose. Its not a big miss, maybe 2cm at full extension (greater over distance) and his eyes seem to lock the target as normal.

I gave him a day to sort it out on his own.

After a day of checking and waiting there was no improvement on his aim, but the little guy was happy as ever going about his usual routines.

I figured it must be a sprain? so I fed him by hand for a week so as to rest his tongue but it didn't seem to help. He is not in any pain and at first would try and try until he got lucky but he adapted in less than 2days to a new technique of cornering the crickets and sticking his tongue out (not shooting) and using a scooping motion. Its not such a great distance attack but sometimes a good melee weapon is just what you need.

His crickets are also very springy! and eat the best gut loader I can find with fresh veggies for moisture. He prefers crickets that also have a bit of that flaky fish food in them. + occasional calcium/vitamin dusting & small and giant meal worms which he gets once a week. I have caught him snacking on random insects that are attracted to the plants and I've warned him hes going to get fat but hes doesn't listen.

I string up a 2liter bottle of water over the ficus which drips for an hour twice a day and I drip water onto his nose until i get a drinking reflex on really hot days. I have a humidity/temperature gauge to help me judge what he needs.

Anyway I don't think this is anything I need worry about (except that all the other kids are going to laugh at him) and it will either get better on its own or someone will invent chameleon tongue yoga but I thought I better check anyway. He does still attempt shooting occasionally and I get him to shoot with meal worms occasionally at moderate distances to see if hes healing.

I do have some very nice macro photos of him which I'll upload at some point.
 
Can you post a picture please?

What supplements specifically do you use and how often with each?
What do you feed to the insects specifically?

Is the sunlight passing through glass or plastic? (Have to ask.)
You said in the cold weather you use a night lamp...there shouldn't be any LIGHT on the chameleon at night.
 
I use T-Rex Calcium Plus as my main cricket food and a 2:1 Calcium/Phosphorus+Vitamin (also T-Rex) duster. By "night light" I mean a Zoo Med 100w nocturnal Infrared heat lamp.

Yes the sun is completely unfiltered and I'm sure its not laziness as i do tempt him to shoot occasionally and he does still try every now and then on his own but the constant missing makes him less eager to use it as a hunting technique.

His stools are regular and when he very occasionally misses passing for more than a 4 or 5 days (usually if the weather is cold) I will give him 2 or 3 crickets dipped in cod-liver oil, a trick I lear'nt from a friend at the pet shop who has been keeping chameleons for more than 15 years. The reason I do this is because he does have access to common dirt so I need to make sure he hasn't become compacted from eating something odd like a squirrel. You need to put these crickets up to hi his mouth to eat as they dont stick to his tongue but it works a treat in less than 24hours.

I am familiar with how a sick chameleon acts having nursed a few of the local dwarf chameleons back to health and I can assure you he is in fighting form.

His mouth is soft and pink with no discoloration except for the usual darker vein in his tongue.

Yes I know the no lights approach is not the norm but he is living in a very similar climate to the Yemeni valleys that his species evolved in.

I have only seen his full colours once in the 7 months I've had him when he thought a dangling rope was a snake so he really is not stressed at all.

Here is a recent photo taken since the tongue incident. I do photography as part of my profession but I'm going to save them for the photo comp. This one is taken by a friend of mine and the colour has been pushed out a bit in photoshop.

Edit: I'll upload a bunch more into my memer gallery so they dont get lost in the thread stack :) I've also uploaded some of the pics of dwarf chameleons native to South AFrica.
 

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I took thsi 10 minutes ago so you guys can see more of his body :)
 

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Yeah it was my very first post in the forum so didn't know there where rules for asking for help.

His arm is fine, its the tongue being discussed.
 
There are no set rules here but the "Ask for Help" form and pictures do help. More pictures of the limbs would be very helpful......it's does look like some possible MBD there.

As far as supplements you need three:
1. Plain calcium at everyother feeding
2. Calcium with d3 twice a month
3. Multi Vitamin once a month

Proper gut load is also very important. DO NOT use fish flakes......this can cause gout.

Mealworms are not a good feeder.....they are hard for them to digest. Try superworms instead. Also, silkworms are and excellent feeder.

If it drops below 65 at night you can use a ceramic bulb for heat.

Are you misting? Have you had a fecal? Has your guy had a check up lately by a chameleon vet? You can use this site to find a vet in your area: http://www.herpvetconnection.com/

Also, the link below will give you some great info on keeping your guy healthy: http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.com/

These little amimals are very hard to keep in captivity and a number of things from your husbandry could be causing the tongue issues.
 
 
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beeze said:
There are no set rules here but the "Ask for Help" form and pictures do help. More pictures of the limbs would be very helpful......it's does look like some possible MBD there.

As far as supplements you need three:
1. Plain calcium at everyother feeding
2. Calcium with d3 twice a month
3. Multi Vitamin once a month

Proper gut load is also very important. DO NOT use fish flakes......this can cause gout.

Mealworms are not a good feeder.....they are hard for them to digest. Try superworms instead. Also, silkworms are and excellent feeder.

If it drops below 65 at night you can use a ceramic bulb for heat.

Are you misting? Have you had a fecal? Has your guy had a check up lately by a chameleon vet? You can use this site to find a vet in your area: http://www.herpvetconnection.com/

Also, the link below will give you some great info on keeping your guy healthy: http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.com/

These little amimals are very hard to keep in captivity and a number of things from your husbandry could be causing the tongue issues.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the in depth reply.

My gut loader and my duster both have D3 and are cover pretty comprehensively calcium and the rest. I use very little fish flakes, maybe 5% of their total feed. It is a high grade vitamin brand so I do like them to have some of it but will keep an eye out for gout.


Now the shocker!:

There are no herp vets in Cape Town and possibly South Africa, there is just not a big enough market for them yet. This has meant I have applied myself to learning as much as I can about chameleons especially diseases so I can spot them early. There is always more to learn but I have not come across something I have not read up on for many months now. Theres nothing you cant find on the internet! :D

To give this site credit there are more well informed people responding to questions on this site than any other and trust me I've gone through thousands :) hence my registering here.

I will post some more pics of his limbs for you but they have been that shape since I got him at 4 months. He really is a lively guy and I think if he had MBD
we would have broken his limbs several times by now.
 
well i would say you don't need to give any more D3 ever if your cham is outside as much as you say he is,
Also you mentioned the crickets and cod liver oil thing,how often do you do this?Be really careful with this...one drop of this is enough for 100+ insects you need a tiny amount for your chameleon 50 IU.
Over doing it with the retinol will give you the same problem as not enough
 
My apologies to jannb, it is possible that George may have had some form of MBD before I got him.

I looked up a skeletal model for the veiled and then went and compared it by gently feeling between the hand and elbow. There does seem to be some kind of node on the bone (possibly healing) but it is completely symmetrical on both front arms. This is also no different from any of the other local veiled that I have seen so I still dont think so.

Here is a picture of him the day I got him and then two more taken today (6-7 months later. He has never had any problem with mobility or shown any distress.

The bend of the arm looks less in the earlier photo but is the same, the mor erecent one is just taken from a better angle.
 

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Mbd.....

That was definitely an MBD issue.....That limb is pretty deformed. The third picture shows that it has actually broken at least once and fused. Tongue issues are sometimes related to MBD. The real sun and your supplimentation makes MBD not likely to be a problem now.

I think you are overdosing him on the cod liver. If you thought he had a Vitamin A problem the most you would treat him with is a very light dab from a Q-tip in his mouth once a week. The retinol stuff is better than cod liver oil. I think, from what you describe, that you are using way too much cod liver oil. Why did you start using it? In my years of keeping chams I've never done any supplimenting of Vitamin A with cod liver oil or retinol exept in a case where there was a diagnosed deficiency. I let the insect gutload provide it for me. Like TreeLionsUk said, you are probably causing the tongue issue by using the stuff like that. I would completely stop it. Get rid of the D3 too. He has no need with the sun exposure. You can harm him with that too. The body can regulate D3 production from sun exposure and "turn it off" so it does not overdose on it. When the reptile gets D3 from suppliments it can not turn off anything. You can overdose him.

Everything else looks fine. I wish I could do the sun habitat thing that you can. And, you obviously really care about your guy :)
 
Do you think it could be a genetic defect?

When I first got him we thought his legs were really weird and completely different to the local dwarf species that we were used to so I made a point of checking him against other veiled in the only pet shop that has chameleons and they also had the little kink in the leg as far as I could tell so I thought no more of it.

The ones in the pet shop were from a different breeder.

Also is it possible for a chameleon to get 2 fractures in the same place on both legs and heal up completely in the first 4 months of its life?

Since the day i got him he walks around in his balcony pretty much constantly unless he is sunning himself. Does MBD make movement painful to a cham?

Maybe there is a genetic defect inherent in our local population possibly from a limited gentic pool. I doubt more than a few breeding pairs have been imported. I'll make a point of checking other veiled and try get some photos.
 
MBD usually occurs from improper lighting.

What kind of UVB Lighting has he been under, like before you got him?
When on the balcony is he in direct sun, or behind a window?
How long a day does he get sun?

This is why filling out how to ask for help is useful. So people can get as much information as possible to help assess the situation, instead of slowly prying for pieces one question at a time.

I wish you luck.
 
PardalisGirl said:
That was definitely an MBD issue.....That limb is pretty deformed. The third picture shows that it has actually broken at least once and fused. Tongue issues are sometimes related to MBD. The real sun and your supplimentation makes MBD not likely to be a problem now.

I think you are overdosing him on the cod liver. If you thought he had a Vitamin A problem the most you would treat him with is a very light dab from a Q-tip in his mouth once a week. The retinol stuff is better than cod liver oil. I think, from what you describe, that you are using way too much cod liver oil. Why did you start using it? In my years of keeping chams I've never done any supplimenting of Vitamin A with cod liver oil or retinol exept in a case where there was a diagnosed deficiency. I let the insect gutload provide it for me. Like TreeLionsUk said, you are probably causing the tongue issue by using the stuff like that. I would completely stop it. Get rid of the D3 too. He has no need with the sun exposure. You can harm him with that too. The body can regulate D3 production from sun exposure and "turn it off" so it does not overdose on it. When the reptile gets D3 from suppliments it can not turn off anything. You can overdose him.

Everything else looks fine. I wish I could do the sun habitat thing that you can. And, you obviously really care about your guy :)
Click to expand...

I agree. After seeing more pics MBD with multi breaks at one time. I agree too much D3 and stop the cod liver oil. We have other South Africa members here.......maybe you can start a new thread "need vet in Cape Town" and they can help you out there. Jann
 
I stated this posts ago and was ignored:confused:

Some people don't want to hear that what they are doing is wrong,you need to step back and research what your putting into your chameleons,and what the supplements effect on the chameleon is:eek:
Its commonsense at the end of the day,

Sick of reading problems like this,get savvy and wise up
 
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Very Common...

Jono, the fractures on both limbs or bowing on both limbs is extremely common in MBD cases. Happens all the time. The pet store you got your boy is probably the one who caused the issue. They got young chams from multiple breeders and then did not provide the proper lighting or supplimentation and caused the issue with all they chams they had. This also happens all the time. Your boy was in a peak growing period when you purchased him. An MBD problem will escalate extremely quickly at that age. It did not take much time at the pet store to develop the problem.

You bought him and gave him what he needed and his bones calcified and the breaks fused. The only other thing that would have helped, had you known, was to splint the legs straight so that they would heal and calcify in a more natural position. Splinting does work. There is nothing that can be done to straighten them now and he gets along fine and is active and mobile. You can forget the MBD issue. You corrected that. Just get rid of the D3 and cod liver oil. I think you will find the tongue issue will get better of time. You will also prevent his premature death.
 
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