Feeding every other day - reason?

[Cainschams]

24 bugs a week, no matter how its divided up, seems like too much to me.

That did not even render when I was replying I would say more around 18 depending on the size of the feeders for a week.

 

[Alexl]

Remember-a fat cham is not a healthy cham.

That's the point.

All chameleons I opened until now had very large abdominal fat bodies, some also had almost "bursting" helmets. In my opinion, this implies most have been feeding very much (too much?). There are some problems I see between cages and wilderness: First, often people don't reflect about a reptile as an cold-blooded animal, which doesn't need to eat as much as we do as mammals (a problem other reptiles at home have too). And there are surely periods in wilderness without any food, too - in cages at home, there will never be a whole week or two without giving our chameleons food, won't it?

I augur from this, most chameleons get much more food than they really need. I feed an adult panther chameleon twice a week, in winter not more than a maximum of 10 bugs/crickets/whatever per week. This seems to be too sparsely for a lot of you, I know, even though it works well... But remember: Chameleons reach their sexual maturity not by days, but by weight. So why should a chameleon not eat everything it gets? In the great outdoors noone cares for their food every day and our animals don't know whether there will be food next day. I think we as those who keep chameleons have to pay attention especially not to "overfeed" them. Well-intentioned may not be well sometimes.

Other question for this topic.. what's a "good weight"? The weight chameleons show in nature depending to the season? The weight we keepers tell it "good"...?

 

[Screameleons]

Hey guys,

We recommend cutting down the amount of food a chameleon gets as they get older. The reason is that chameleons in captivity are not as active as those found in the wild. In fact, they pretty much just hang out in their favorite spot all day. We bring food to them, instead of them going out on their own to find it. Because of this, its very easy for a chameleon to become overweight. Chameleons are healthiest when kept lean. Hope this helps.

Vince

 

[Echoezra]

Actually that was my bad math, I was just throwing numbers out there as an example for if I found a number that was a good sustaining number. The numbers I was planning to start with were a max of 21, range of 19 to 21 kind of thing at first then adjust accordingly. I figured if the standard starting basis was 6 every other day, and 3.5 feedings in a week (cause 7 is an odd number) then 21 max. would be the total to begin experimenting with. Of course if that's too much I will adjust it down, and I likely will skip days here and there anyway. Just wondered about if there would be any physical harm reason if they ate more often as long as the total was a proper maintenance amount. I plan to keep a feeding/care journal, so that if a problem dies arise I can look back and see what factors might have effected/need changing. I appreciate the warnings about overdrawing and will make a definite point about monitoring that.
I suppose my next question would involve judging the amount of feeders depending which bug you were feeding. Is there a link that spells out the equivalencies like one large hornworm = 4 large crickets or 3.5 superworms or 5 or 2 medium silkworms, etc? Anything like that for reference? (I guess it depends on what your definition of medium is too. The store I work at was billed for medium hornworms this week and they came in puny, less than an inch long.) so yeah if there were measurements like 1/2" crickets that would help too.

 

[Echoezra]

Sorry about some words there I'm typing on my phone, stupid autocorrect. Lol. Does not dies, overfeeding, not overdrawing, etc. Haha sorry.