Breeding Tips!

[dacrazycanadian]

Hi there everyone! A friend and I are currently breeding our Ambanja's and will have babies on the way in the next few months hopefully! (Attached picture of my sire, Sintel)

I wanted to ask everyone, in their experience, what they think are good tips for breeding chameleons, specifically panthers.

Tips on anything (egg incubation, when to separate babies, how big of cage to house them in, not breaking the bank on supplies, etc.)

*NOTE* Pictures are highly encouraged

 

[dacrazycanadian]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

 

[Saldarya]

I think the best tip I can offer you above and beyond basic care requirements is to raise the babies separately at least after they are 4-6 weeks old. The difference between how fast they grow and health is pretty substantial compared to raising them all together beyond that point.

 

[Olimpia]

Start breeding your own food now! Stuff like roaches (get small species, whose nymphs are small enough for baby chameleons) now, and later on in the incubation start your own fruit fly cultures, and crickets too if you're up for it. Breeding your own food greatly reduces your costs and you ensure that you're prepared to feed them all the time. They can go through thousands of feeders a week (depending on how many hatchlings you have) so the more you can breed yourself the better. Plus, roaches and fruit flies are super easy.

 

[junglefries]

Olimpia gave you the best advice. I always keep one culture rotating of hydei and crix breeding. You do not want to be running all over town every two days buying up everything you can get your hands on. Unless you won the lottery, then who really cares, right? It just takes too much time, and your babies will need that time. They poop like they think they will never have the chance again. I clean all my cage bottoms twice a day. It is a lot of work. Clean, Feed, Mist, Repeat....all day LONG!!!!

 

[dacrazycanadian]

Thank you everyone! Keep the tips coming!

 

[Olimpia]

I was on my phone last night so I couldn't write too much but here are another tip that I thought was good when I had my clutches.

- I think butterfly cages are an awesome first baby cage for those first few weeks when they're eating tiny food like fruit flies. The FFs can't get through the butterfly screen like they can with normal screen cages or how they can climb up platic totes, so you waste less food and because the feeders can climb all the surfaces there are more surfaces to feed from for the babies. More acess to food, regarless of where they are.

Then when they're eating bigger food they can go into whatever housing but I think the butterfly cages were an awesome thing for me. Plus they're cheap an come in various sizes, from a 12" cube and up.

 

[dacrazycanadian]

I was on my phone last night so I couldn't write too much but here are another tip that I thought was good when I had my clutches.

- I think butterfly cages are an awesome first baby cage for those first few weeks when they're eating tiny food like fruit flies. The FFs can't get through the butterfly screen like they can with normal screen cages or how they can climb up platic totes, so you waste less food and because the feeders can climb all the surfaces there are more surfaces to feed from for the babies. More acess to food, regarless of where they are.

Then when they're eating bigger food they can go into whatever housing but I think the butterfly cages were an awesome thing for me. Plus they're cheap an come in various sizes, from a 12" cube and up.

Do you keep them housed together at this point?

 

[Olimpia]

Do you keep them housed together at this point?

My clutches were tiny, no more than 8-10 babies, so I did keep all of them together the first 2 weeks in the butterfly cage. After that they went into a large plastic tote for another 2-3 weeks and then were split between two 36" x 18" screen cages. If I had had more babies I would have split them up more, but they were so few and so small that it was more than enough space.

I had purchase more screen cages just in case, but I ended up not really needing them.

 

[dacrazycanadian]

Did you split male and female between the two cages to fight early breeding? Or did you not worry about that?

 

[Olimpia]

In my first clutch I had 8 females and 1 male lol so, the male cage would have been pretty lonely. But with the exception of the two girls I kept they all went to new homes at the 3 month mark, so they were too little to breed. The second clutch was nearly 50-50 so I was able to split them up but still, they were gone by month 3 as well.