First Yemen babies expected soon

[starter]

Hi! My Veiled Yemen chameleon eggs have been in the incubator for almost 6 months and I expect the babies to start hatching soon. As it is my first batch, do you have any information, recommendations, and advice for me? For example, will the babies know naturally how to feed, drink, and move to and from the lights, or will they need any specific help with it? Can I pick them up right after hatching or shall I wait until they are dry and start moving around? How soon after hatching shall I offer them the first food and what do you recommend - baby crickets, baby locusts, calciworms? Well dusted - or shall I rather be careful with powder additives? And at what age shall I start advertising them for sale? I live in the UK, southern England.

 

[KobaOregonherper]

@Beman @JoXie411 Honestly not sure who tag in this one. Im not sure why, but I cant recall anyone on here whose a vieled breeder lol. Figured you guys would atleast know the info . Hopefully they dont hatch too soon so you can be prepped for when they do. 6 months should've been a ton of prep time. As for breeders who are good people to ask with experience. @Matt Vanilla Gorilla and @Brodybreaux25

 

[GoodKarma19]

@jannb and @Brodybreaux25 I know have experience with veiled hatchlings. @kinyonga, of course! We dont have a whole lot of veiled breeders (at least not any who mass produce), but that should get you on the right track! Search the forums for hatching related info; should be lots if you do some digging! Focus on looking into hatching set ups, and go from there.

One of the most important things is to have lots of small food items available - fruit fly cultures, pinhead crickets, etc etc. You'll be going through a lot, and you'll want established cultures before the babies start hatching! Don't want to get caught with your pants down.

I have no personal experience with hatchlings (yet!!), so that's all I feel confident enough to comment on. I'm glad that you're asking now, but I have to agree with @KobaOregonherper... in the future it'd be wise to do your research a little further in advance!

 

[starter]

Thanks, I actually did quite a bit of "digging" already and I have two vivariums completely set up for the hatchlings and an excellent reptile food supplier who delivers any live food imaginable overnight. I shop here: https://www.reptilecentre.com/ - so I think I don't need to set up cultures upfront myself. I now hope to hear some practical tips and warnings from breeders who have some experience, so I don't need to learn from my own mistakes. I have almost 200 eggs developing, so it will be a big project for me to raise so many babies for the next months and years! I am even thinking about moving to another flat/house where I can give them their own room where I can maintain a higher humidity and temperature all the time. Oh, and I do have experience with breeding snakes - I used to be a licensed python breeder of endangered Australian pythons and raised several batches of python babies successfully in the past - but snakes are very different from chameleons!

 

[Lennoncham]

You will want more then 2 vivs for the babies. 200 eggs is a crapload. Hope you have a shit ton of money saved for feeders.

 

[GoodKarma19]

Thanks, I actually did quite a bit of "digging" already and I have two vivariums completely set up for the hatchlings and an excellent reptile food supplier who delivers any live food imaginable overnight. I shop here: https://www.reptilecentre.com/ - so I think I don't need to set up cultures upfront myself. I now hope to hear some practical tips and warnings from breeders who have some experience, so I don't need to learn from my own mistakes. I have almost 200 eggs developing, so it will be a big project for me to raise so many babies for the next months and years! I am even thinking about moving to another flat/house where I can give them their own room where I can maintain a higher humidity and temperature all the time. Oh, and I do have experience with breeding snakes - I used to be a licensed python breeder of endangered Australian pythons and raised several batches of python babies successfully in the past - but snakes are very different from chameleons!

You'll have to excuse me for reading exactly what you had written, and concluding that you had done minimal (if any) research. It's a pretty easy assumption to make, given that your opening post is relatively broad and we see an alarming number of folks coming here that have been incubating eggs and waiting until the last second to actually look into anything! The hour's too late (early?) for me to bother looking through your post history. Glad I was mistaken. I'm happy to hear of more people looking into veiled breeding projects. They're highly underrated, and continue to be amongst my favorite chameleons!

Hope you get the answers you're looking for! If nothing turns up to your satisfaction and you use FaceBook at all, you can try checking out the Chameleon Culture Club group. They have a great number of breeders, many who have been doing it for years (decades, even!). I mostly check it out for the pictures, but there have been some interesting discussions as well. A mentor that you can contact anytime would likely prove beneficial!

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Oh, you poor fool... lol your about to loose a lot of time and money.

Just going to be blunt here. There is no way you did any meaningful research if you asking these VERY basic questions.

will the babies know naturally how to feed, drink, and move to and from the lights, or will they need any specific help with it?

My response:
Yes all instinct but they should be monitored closely. babies overheat very easily, at this age all they need is UVB, introduce mild basking at 1mo. Your going to need at least 10 vivs. Some will mature much faster than others and will have to be sorted by developmental progress or the little ones simply wont be able to compete with their more developed counter parts, they will slowly starve. Not to mention that the bigger siblings will become more aggressive towards the little ones and begin to nip at them, that means a lot of tail tips missing and bight scars. No one will buy a cham with half its tail missing.

Can I pick them up right after hatching or shall I wait until they are dry and start moving around?

No, do not touch them until they have fully absorbed the yoke of their egg and their belly has closed. Monitor the yolk sac to ensure it doesn't dry out during this time.

And at what age shall I start advertising them for sale? I live in the UK, southern England.

No cham should ever be sold younger than 90 days

How soon after hatching shall I offer them the first food and what do you recommend - baby crickets, baby locusts, calciworms?

Babies are eating machines and need access to food 24/7. They eat all day everyday. I usually start offering food 48hrs after their belly has closed but most don't eat until day 3 or 4. You will need an ungodly amount of pinhead crickets and a mountain of fruit fly cultures. You should have started you own colonies three months ago. I know your counting on that cricket delivery guy but I really don't think you understand what your getting into here. You are about to loose you ass financially if your planning on buying feeders. Start colonies NOW! You say you have 200 viable eggs, I'm going to assume they are in clutches of about 50 each.

Basic math:
50 hatchlings @ 20 fruit flies a day per cham over a 90 day period = 90,000 fruit flies
50 hatchlings @ 10 pinheads a day per cham over a 90 day period = 45,000 pinhead crickets

Well dusted - or shall I rather be careful with powder additives?

Start very light dusting on week two. I'm going to emphasis the VERY LIGHT part, it is VERY EASY to OD a hatchling.

How many are in this first clutch?

Fill out the form linked in my signature below to tell us about the rest of your plans so we can try to correct any other issues you may have.

 

[starter]

Hello Brodey, thank you a lot for your invaluable advice. My first batch is 73 eggs, laid on 24th April. So they are actually only in their 5th month now. The next batch was on 31st May with about 50 eggs left out of 65 from another female. And she laid another batch of 67 eggs just recently, on 1st September. Okay, following your maths, I will start breeding fruit flies and crickets now... and I will fill in the linked form, too. You wrote that I would need about 10 vivariums??? Oh dear! No worries, I have enough money in my savings account to buy everything we need. I know breeding is a crazy and expensive hobby! Regarding vivariums, I have two reasonably big spare ones, 60x40x80cm and 45x45x60cm, and I was thinking about putting the bigger babies in one and the smaller ones in the other to prevent the bullying you wrote about. As you are suggesting a much stricter separation, what size of vivariums would you recommend? Would little plastic crates of about 40x25x30cm with a long UV beam above them suffice? That's the crates where I keep my feeders in, see the first picture. (I usually keep it hidden below the printer, out of my cham's view.) The second picture shows my entire current chameleon setup. Finally, the third picture shows some of my eggs!

 

[jannb]

Your eggs look good! You sure do have allot of them. My clutches are in the very low 30’s or high 20’s. Right now the first thing you need to do is start preparing your baby bins. At first you can keep 15 or so to a bin but by 3 weeks old they will need to be separated to about 3 to 4 to a bin and you will need to separate them even more by 6 to 7 weeks old and by 10 weeks old they will each need their own cage.

You also need to get your fruit fly cultures going. You might be able to raise your own crickets, too. Some do but I usually raise my fruit flies and buy my crickets. With my small clutches the babies eat 4,000 crickets a week along with the pinheads. I also buy praying mantis eggs and let them hatch in the baby bins.

You can see some of my baby bins here. I will post more pictures of my set ups soon.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/the-babies-are-one-month-old.40584/

 

[Beman]

@Beman @JoXie411 Honestly not sure who tag in this one. Im not sure why, but I cant recall anyone on here whose a vieled breeder lol. Figured you guys would atleast know the info . Hopefully they dont hatch too soon so you can be prepped for when they do. 6 months should've been a ton of prep time. As for breeders who are good people to ask with experience. @Matt Vanilla Gorilla and @Brodybreaux25

Yeah nope... Way outside my area of expertise lol.

 

[starter]

My form completed:

Chameleon Info:

• Your Chameleon - 2x Veiled Yemen chameleons, 1F&1M, ca. 11/2 and 4 years old. Both about nine months in my care, but I have also had other chameleons before.
• Handling - Daily.
• Feeding - Each cham gets every second day about 10 crickets or 10 locusts or a bowl of worms and vegetables - a mix of Morio, waxworms and calciworms, with a choice of spinach, parsley, carrot, sweet potato, broccoli, etc. - feeders gut-loaded with the same.
• Supplements - Alternating with every locust feed, i.e. rich dusting once a week with either of the following, so they have one portion of each per month: Repashy Calcium Plus Vitamin and Calcium supplement, Nutrobal calcium balancer (without D3) and multivitamin, ReptiCalcium (calcium carbonate only with D3), and Reptoboost (electrolyte, probiotic and energy supplement).
• Watering - Dripper going for about an hour per day, plus rich water spraying on all the live plants twice a day. I also have a bowl of water in the viv which they actually do use sometimes, though they see them more often (daily) licking off the misted water from leaves.
• Fecal Description - Firm consistency and a variety of colours - mostly brown but sometimes a totally white piece comes out, too. Have not tested parasites, as both chams appear perfectly healthy.
• History - Male has been used for breeding by another breeder before; female was raised by myself from 3 months old.

Cage Info:

• Cage Type - See picture in my above post. It is a combination of glass and screen, and my chams are allowed to move freely from cage to cage and also within our living room to find their perfect spots. Both of them always return for sleeping into the large mesh viv by themselves.
• Lighting - UV lamps exchanged every 6 months and basking lamps with about 38°C right underneath. Turn automatically on at 6am and off at 6pm.
• Temperature - Basking max 38°C, lowest overnight temp 15°C. Temperature meter attached to viv wall plus pointer device to measure temperature in any spot.
• Humidity - 40%-85%. Strong misting twice a day. Live plants. Humidity meter attached to viv wall.
• Plants - Yucca palm tree, pear tree, passionfruit bush, fig tree, and some little leafy ones.
• Placement - Next to a window. From room floor to 180cm high.
• Location - UK, South England, Sussex.

Current Problem - Starting to breed, eager to learn and gather useful information.

 

[starter]

Your eggs look good! You sure do have allot of them. My clutches are in the very low 30’s or high 20’s. Right now the first thing you need to do is start preparing your baby bins. At first you can keep 15 or so to a bin but by 3 weeks old they will need to be separated to about 3 to 4 to a bin and you will need to separate them even more by 6 to 7 weeks old and by 10 weeks old they will each need their own cage.

You also need to get your fruit fly cultures going. You might be able to raise your own crickets, too. Some do but I usually raise my fruit flies and buy my crickets. With my small clutches the babies eat 4,000 crickets a week along with the pinheads. I also buy praying mantis eggs and let them hatch in the baby bins.

You can see some of my baby bins here. I will post more pictures of my set ups soon.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/the-babies-are-one-month-old.40584/


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Beautiful setups! Thank you so much for this inspiration! Okay, I will start building and gluing such little scaffolds, too... Indeed, we will need a lot more space for this project.

 

[jannb]

I make the jungle gyms out of shish kabob sticks and hot glue. The babies love them.

Where do you live? Maybe you could fine someone to take part of your eggs.

 

[starter]

Jannb, thank you once again for your really great advice. Your pictures are exactly what I was hoping to see here. I am in South England, UK, and have not found any breeders nearby yet. However, there is a reptile specialist pet shop about half an hour drive from us and they have expressed interest in buying my chameleons when they are 3 months old (though certainly not all of them), and I am sure there will be more demand in the London area. There are also some pet-selling websites where I can advertise online. Further, I also know the very experienced breeder where I bought my male from and maybe he will send me some buyers; he lives about 2 hours drive away and has built his breeding setup himself, as he is a carpenter. It is made of wood with several compartments, different from yours, but I like yours much better and most of all, I can copy it more easily!

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Looks like your on the right track with the adults, what % is your UVB?

I'm not familiar with those supplements, you could simplify your schedule by switching to Repashy loD. Put it on every feeder every time, no skipping.

 

[starter]

Brody, what does loD or LoD stand for? And what % should the UVB be? I'm not sure what lamps I have now, but I will have to replace them soon. My female seems to be sometimes so "hungry" for UVB that she climbs on top of the cage and squeezes directly underneath the UVB canope and she stays there for an hour or so. Is that good or bad for her?

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Brody, what does loD or LoD stand for? And what % should the UVB be? I'm not sure what lamps I have now, but I will have to replace them soon. My female seems to be sometimes so "hungry" for UVB that she climbs on top of the cage and squeezes directly underneath the UVB canope and she stays there for an hour or so. Is that good or bad for her?

View attachment 245844

LoD is an all in one supplement, it covers calcium, vitamins, and D3. Its called loD because it has low levels of D3, which enables you to put it on every feeder with overdosing your cham.

How do you not know your UVB? You've got to know your lighting, critical, go look right now.

 

[KobaOregonherper]

Your eggs look good! You sure do have allot of them. My clutches are in the very low 30’s or high 20’s. Right now the first thing you need to do is start preparing your baby bins. At first you can keep 15 or so to a bin but by 3 weeks old they will need to be separated to about 3 to 4 to a bin and you will need to separate them even more by 6 to 7 weeks old and by 10 weeks old they will each need their own cage.

You also need to get your fruit fly cultures going. You might be able to raise your own crickets, too. Some do but I usually raise my fruit flies and buy my crickets. With my small clutches the babies eat 4,000 crickets a week along with the pinheads. I also buy praying mantis eggs and let them hatch in the baby bins.

You can see some of my baby bins here. I will post more pictures of my set ups soon.
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/the-babies-are-one-month-old.40584/


View attachment 245828View attachment 245830

Thanks @jannb forgot to tag you as well.

 

[KobaOregonherper]

Yeah nope... Way outside my area of expertise lol.

Yeah but, you know, you and Brody, and Brody does, figured it was rubbing off lol.

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Yeah but, you know, you and Brody, and Brody does, figured it was rubbing off lol.

Sooooooo many joke opportunities here, too easy......