Chameleon Salad??

[BClizzi]

sometimes, i have a handful of freash parsley and to get him to eat it, i put a calcium diet gutloaded mealworm on top so he grabs on to the mealworm and parsley with it. My question is is how bad are mealworms for chams? can i do this daily? i have heared mealworms give no nutrition so if it does nothing is it hurting him? i posted a photo of what it is below.

 

[Andee]

Well from what it looks like that mealworm looks like a giant mealworm? If I was to give mealworms at all it definitely would be giants. Those are injected with growth hormones. Why not offer a superworm instead?

 

[BClizzi]

im pretty sure its a regular mealworm... and because i have a dealer down the street that sells these for DIRT cheap. I have them for my leopard geckos. Superworms are not something i normally buy.

 

[BClizzi]

 

[Andee]

Do they ever pupate?

 

[BClizzi]

yeah i have like 30 beetles from them.

 

[Andee]

I am always used to seeing mealworms a darker color. Unless they are of course giants, I wonder if this is the sub species or color morph the giants originally came from? Anyway there isn't technically anything wrong with it... other than too many mealworms too often can cause impaction in any reptile. Usually this is more of a problem with younger reptiles. Also mealworms are relatively fattier than healthy in general. But in my opinion one a day (as long as your guy isn't younger than 8 months) shouldn't be a problem, just make sure you offer plenty of water and soft bodied feeders with the mealworms. A decent sized soft bodied feeder once a day should be able to fix any possibility of impaction.

 

[BClizzi]

okay. i feed him 5 to 6 dubias a day and those are soft shell right? im pretty sure those are.

 

[Andee]

No soft bodied feeders refer to caterpillars or types of larvae that have no shell and have high water content, like silkworms and hornworms...

 

[BClizzi]

oh my bad lol. well i dont have access to any of those but he should be fine right? i feed him a couple every 4 days or so.

 

[Andee]

Yeah if you feed it with the salad and only feed one to two rather plump ones every four days I don't see why it'd be a problem. I don't feed mealworms myself, I feed superworms instead, but I don't buy into the huge impact problem they cause as long as you don't feed a huge meal of just them, especially if your chameleon is an older chameleon. Older reptiles have less problems with impaction in general. Chameleons out in the wild would eat beetles if they came across them. But they would only eat them every now in them most likely and would have plenty to drink in between.

 

[BClizzi]

okay. I probably wont feed him them then. I would rather him not be impacted thanks for your help!

 

[Andee]

If you are worried about impaction with mealworms but still want the reaction they get, feed superworms to him instead. You don't have to worry about biting much with chameleons. They chew too much. Though every now and then a superworm can nip the gums or something. It has never happens to me but I have heard it happening before. I have never had bad reactions with super worms even with my softer jawed Jackson.

 

[BClizzi]

okay sounds good! im going to the reptile expo this saturday so im going to grab 250 crickets and probably 200 superworms. Is that a good amount of supers?

 

[Andee]

definitely is XD You might want to pick up some hornworms or silkworms if you randomly run across them. They are usually big favorites and it's always good to have 4+ feeders to feed off. I don't go below six but that's only because I raise six feeders by myself. Then I buy around 4+ different feeders on a regular basis. And 3-4 on a not so regular basis. I have too much room, and too much time XD

 

[BClizzi]

holy cow thats a handful you got there. lol would you ever sell some off to me? and i sure will if i come across some

 

[Andee]

I will when I am able to, right at the moment I am waiting for two of my insects colonies to start establishing more, and I am having problems shipping at all at the moment due to the flood warnings and general rain. I am hoping to ship the couple people what I owe tomorrow because the rain should have a huge break and the streets should be a little less... river like? XD At the moment I have a stupidly healthy colony of white silkworms, that for some reason this strain I am having minimal die offs. So I am hoping to get some eggs from this batch and strengthen my next worms that I need to order. Zebras is what I usually buy. At the moment I am hoping to get a huge boom of isopods and green banana roaches, though I do have lots of nymphs for my GBRs. I am just starting up my superworm colony. My dubia colony is getting to the point where I have to sell off some of my adults (females included) I just want to make sure everyone is healthy before hand. I had a small outburst of non-parasitic phorrid flies, so after cleaning the bin real well and actually changing everyone to a larger one... because there were just too many and I needed more territory for the males, I added a clean up crew and didn't feed veggies/fruit for a month and half, only doing small amounts of dry food to keep the colony going. The phorrid flies have died off (especially since I unplugged the heat source for now) and now I am just making sure they don't come back before I sell off any adults. My stick insects, I am waiting for my three females to lay eggs and then I think I have to wait 6-8 months for the new group. That's everyone I think I actually raise. Then I buy wax worms every now and then, black soldier flies/larvae, hornworms, stable flies, and then I sometimes do praying mantids when I feel like I need to busy myself with hundreds of insects, butter worms, and butterflies. I sometimes get the itch to raise wildcaught grasshoppers and do captive breeding.

 

[BClizzi]

wow thats a handful. Well goodluck to you! let me know and i will buy some silkworms from you thanks for the responses and the help!

 

[Graves923]

If you are worried about impaction with mealworms but still want the reaction they get, feed superworms to him instead. You don't have to worry about biting much with chameleons. They chew too much. Though every now and then a superworm can nip the gums or something. It has never happens to me but I have heard it happening before. I have never had bad reactions with super worms even with my softer jawed Jackson.

You can always crush the head of the superworm to prevent them from biting. I do this all the time with my tarantulas since the worms like to burrow into substrate. Crush the head so they cant bite or dig but they still move around to attract a feeding response.

 

[BClizzi]

okay i will try that! thanks