Free chameleon food in yard.
- Thread starter jacksonchamnew
- Start date
NashansCamos
Chameleon Enthusiast
Do your neighbors use pesticide? they don't look like lubbers but better safe than sorry to look up the species
CasqueAbove
Chameleon Enthusiast
If you are concerned with pesticides, you can keep the feeders for 24 hours, and pesticide will kill in that time. I can't say on species
NashansCamos
Chameleon Enthusiast
Correct, this is yet another reason why I advocate for wild caught feeders. If they did have parasites/pesticides, then they would probably be dead already before you managed to find them.
jacksonchamnew
Avid Member
We have had heavy rains and this grass grows on hillside. There are no pesticides. A creek is behind me up the hill so separates neighbors further up hill. No pesticides would leach in my yard.
"If it's alive, it's fine" isn't a particularly good way to judge the safety of wild-caught insects... Parasites often utilize multiple hosts throughout their lifecycle and depend on an intermediate host being eaten to mature and reproduce. Snails in particular carry a lot of nasty pathogens. How many of these parasite can affect chameleons, I don't know. But enough native reptiles and amphibians are affected that I'd rather avoid the risk, personally.
Pesticides aren't a straightforward issue, either. There's so many different types that work in different ways, and not all of them work quickly. And not all of them kill the bugs you want to feed to your chameleon, but that doesn't mean they haven't come into contact with a poison. Even if you don't use pesticides (or herbicides, which can still be harmful to animals) in your own yard, they can be carried by wind and water. Flying insects can pick them up and land in your yard.
That said, I doubt a wild insect once in a while is going to seriously harm your chameleon. It's near impossible to prevent chameleons housed outdoors from eating wild insects, and I'm not aware of a chameleon that has needed medical attention because of that. But I don't think it's worth "advocating' for more wild feeders in a chameleon's diet when we have captive-raised species of most genera you're scavenging for, anyway. Wild reptiles do eat wild bugs, and they do get sick from it- so it's always a possibility, especially when offering wild food regularly.
