French Feeders

[Adman]

Howdy all, I've been out of the chameleon-keeping community for some years now after having to sell my previous pair due to low funds, much to my disappointment. Anyway, I'm living in France now and am the proud owner of an almost four-month-old male veiled chameleon named Ziggy, and I've been researching to try and expand his diet. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with keeping chameleons in France and what feeder insects they found available outside of crickets and locusts. I know that mealworms are readily available from my "local" vendor, as well as waxworms (which I don't want to get him started on), but I've been unable to find anything like hornworms or silkworms, which I'd love to get my hands on. Am I wasting my time chasing down such feeders over here? Any help would be deeply appreciated. I know this is a long-shot of a request, but I figured I'd try anyway.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jims]

Bonjour Adman !

Finding food for chameleons in France could be a little tricky sometimes especially if you live in the country. Local pet store (not specialized in reptiles) will only offer you meal worms, maggots and crickets (locusts if you're lucky). If you haven't found anything where you live (and this is a fairly big city where you live with, I believe, a growing reptile community), I would try looking for feeders online. Have you also tried looking in Belgium since you're not too far from it ?
I work in Paris, so i'm able to get my feeders at a specialized reptile store, but even there, I've never found silk worms or horn worms. My chameleon's diet (I have an Ambilobe) consists mainly of crickets, locusts, roaches (red runners), and once in a while, he'll get buffalo worms, wax worms and dolas larva (Pachnoda marginata). I'm trying to get him to eat some small dubias, but he doesn't seem interested. When springs will finally be here, he'll get more of a variety as i'm able to provide him with wild caught feeders such as small spiders, mantis, flies, grasshoppers and butterflies from the forest nearby.
In june, there will be a big reptile fair in Arras which is close to where you live, try to go there and get some contacts, this might help.
If you need more info or help, feel free to email me.
Bon courage et à bientôt !

 

[Adman]

Merci bien, the place I buy my food from does stock locusts, but they don't sell them smaller than adult phase, so they're way too big for my little veiled at the moment unfortunately, I much preferred locusts to crickets with my old chameleons. It's frustrating that they stock such a narrow variety, fortunately I have been able to find a site online that provides dubia's, but again they're too large for my chameleon right now, but fortunately the site also does home deliveries. However, based on on I've read they don't have a great success rate for delivering feeders that're still alive in the winter months, they don't guarantee or provide refunds for such things.

Thanks for the tip about Arras, I've been hunting for reptile shows near me but I've come up with nothing in the coming months, only ones that I missed by a few weeks, much to my chagrin.

Thanks a great deal for the info, it's a relief to know it's not just me experiencing such difficulties over here.

 

[jims]

It definitely frustrating not be able to find a larger variety of feeders.
If you can get ahold of some dubias, you can try breeding them and give the hatchling to your chameleon. Mine never accepted adult dubias, and I'm now left with a growing colony... I'm trying now to offer him baby dubias, but without any success so far.
The chameleon community in France is growing slowly but surely, but it's nothing compared to the one in the US or even Germany. By going to a reptile show you might be able to get a lot of useful information and products. I hope I can go to the one in june as I would like to get a pair of nosy be true blue, but they are hard to find. If you have time and money, you always go the show in Hamm (Germany). I've never been but I believe it's the biggest in Europe.

 

[Adman]

Visiting reptile shows would be awesome, I used to visit several back in the UK because I managed a reptile centre there before moving back to France, so we always attended a few each year.

I'll consider offering him dubias when he's a little bigger, but right now if I tried breeding them my chameleon would probably be bigger by the time any young ones hatched. He's doing OK on crickets for the moment, I dust them with ReptiVite, but I've been researching and found it to not have a best reputation in the community, so I have purchased some Repashy Calcium Plus, which will arrive in a few days to replace the ReptiVite. I feed them apple, carrot, and basil, as well as a mix I made with lots of different ingredients I found here: https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/sandrachameleon/697-dry-gutload-mix-august-2012.html
Unfortunately I wasn't able to get all of the items on the list, but the majority of it I got a hold of, now I just have to hope my crickets are actually eating the damn stuff.

 

[jims]

I found this site (in french) that sells caterpillars, butterflies and all kind of other insects. They have bombyx eri caterpillar, I don't know if they could be considered as silkworms or hornworms. I'll read more about them and may try them. Anyway, the insects sold are supposed to be for school projects and the caterpillars are quite expensive (6 for 12€) but it might just worth a try.

http://www.insectes.org/shop/shopping_cart.php

 

[Adman]

I found this site (in french) that sells caterpillars, butterflies and all kind of other insects. They have bombyx eri caterpillar, I don't know if they could be considered as silkworms or hornworms. I'll read more about them and may try them. Anyway, the insects sold are supposed to be for school projects and the caterpillars are quite expensive (6 for 12€) but it might just worth a try.

http://www.insectes.org/shop/shopping_cart.php

Thanks so much for this, I'll be sure to look through the site, I really appreciate it.