Dehydration

[CharolettesKeeper]

I have a juvenile female veiled. I think she is about 4-5 months old, the pet store could not tell me for sure how old she was. She is growing well, but I have not seen her drink since the first couple of weeks of having her, her eye turrets are slightly sunk in and her urates are yellow with some white. She was pushing out white stuff through her nostril, but that has stopped. I have tried EVERYTHING I have researched and nothing is working.

Here's what I do:

I heavily mist her cage in the morning and evening for about 2 min. with a hand mister.

She gets 2-3 12 oz helpings of water dripped into foliage that cascades down slowly per day.

Humidity stays between 30-70%, cage temp usually around 80 during day, 65 at night. And I use a cool mist humidifier by her cage most of the time.

I have tried a 35 min shower of warm water, she did not drink and also tried dripping water via a dropper onto her snout- which just pissed her off.

I gut load her crickets with Fluker's and cucumber.

She gets Calcium without D3- 5 days a week

Multi vit -1 day a week

Naked crickets 1 day a week and occasional meal worms


I have only had her since January, but her size has doubled and she seems healthy otherwise.

Any help would be awesome! Thanks!

 

[KatiLemons]

She needs to be misted more often and offered more water for a dripper. Can you post a picture of her cage and her also?

 

[CharolettesKeeper]

I will try to post a pic this weekend.

She has a typical 16x16x16 screen cage that we are actually going to modify for better drainage this weekend, so I can pump more water into it.

 

[Kate]

Hi there. You need to change your gutloading. You will find plenty advice on sandrachameleons blogs. You don't mention calcium with d3. Unless your Cham is outside you will need this twice a month and your multivitamin twice a month. Plain calcium daily. This can vary depending on your supplement and whether he gets outside. It sounds as if he needs more fluid. I am having success just now by placing a plant in the sink and spraying heavily with warm water and letting the tap run gently. There are some feeders that are hydrating such as silkworms and hornworms if you can get them.

Sorry she!

 

[carol5208]

That is a really small cage. I would run a dripper most of the day, and think about getting a larger cage at some point.

 

[CharolettesKeeper]

I'm sorry, the cage is 32" tall, not 16".

She has a live ficus tree as the main foliage.

The multivitamin has d3.

I'm going to modify her cage tomorrow for better drainage. Then I will post a pic.

Does anyone have a ball park figure for the amount they drip daily?
I also don't understand why she doesn't drink when water is available. Is it just a time frame thing?

Thanks for everyone's feed back!

 

[Haze1981]

I have experienced a similar problem. I am only talking from my personal experience but my chameleon won't drink from a dripper and I have noticed that he only starts to drink after I have been spraying for about 2 minutes. I hand spray too but used a pressurised sprayer which I find much better. I spray mine 3 times a day for about 4 to 5 minutes. It sounds to me like you are doing your research and trying to improve things. I hope things are OK. On the plus side mine didn't used to drink in front of me but I see him drinking more now and we have had him 10 months.

 

[CharolettesKeeper]

That makes me feel a little better, Haze1981. I'm trying my best.

 

[CharolettesKeeper]

Here's Charolette:

 

[Kate]

She's a cutie. You need much more foliage for her to hide in also there are not a lot of leaves on that plant to hold water.

 

[mowryrd]

I agree with haze, I need to spray my guy for a minute or more before he starts to drink. Get one of those pump up spray bottles and put the chameleon some place with good drainage. Fill the spray bottle with hot water ( should be warm when it comes out as a mist). And spray until you see the chameleon drink. My guy some time runs away at first but soon settles in and starts to drink

 

[CharolettesKeeper]

Kate: I was thinking that, too, when I look at the picture. It seems so full in person, but I'll definitely get some more in there!

 

[CharolettesKeeper]

STILL not drinking!!

My veiled is still producing orange urates

Here are the changes I've made since the original post:

~I drip water 24x7 in her cage so it has multiple landing/dripping spots

~I am misting an entire mist bottle (24 oz) of warm water 2 x day (I work full time away from home, so I can't do it during mid day), but I also have a humidifier running next to her cage nearly 24x7

~ I added a pothos plant to the cage

~I continue to try 30 min showers

~I have tried giving her silkworms, but she didn't eat them.

~Today I left apple bites, 2 small silkworms, and a very small amount of iceburg lettuce in a bowl for her and did not give her crickets to see if she would eat the silkworms.

I'm seriously loosing sleep over this. Anymore ideas?? Should I just spray her directly until she starts drinking??

 

[Haze1981]

Oh bless you I am sorry you are still having trouble. Have you tried dripping water on the end of your chameleons nose. I have heard people have had success with this. You need a needless syringe like one that you would give a child medicine with. It might take a while using this method but it is worth a try. I hope you can get her drinking properly again and someone with more experience that me can offer some help.