Growing up Veiled

[jajeanpierre]

It's pretty amazing how quickly Veiled Chameleons grow. Al just turned five months a couple days ago and is sitting at 70g. He's working on another shed right now, and with that and moving his enclosure from one wall to another, he's gone off food a bit and is only interested in freshly molted superworms. Hopefully he'll be back to normal once the shed passes.

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He's beautiful. You've done a wonderful job raising him. It is easy to get them to grow big and fast, but it is not easy to get them to develop properly. I wish we saw more veileds on here like your boy without stunted faces and twisted casques and bodies.

As they grow, their appetite slows down. Obesity is such a huge problem with captive, sedentary chameleons, so don't worry about a drop in appetite if all other indicators are he is doing well. I over feed and it is a husbandry mistake that is very hard for me to correct. Almost every one of my chameleons came to me as weak, parasite-ridden, dehydrated and emaciated wild caughts. Being obese isn't the end of the world for the boys, but it will be the kiss of death for my females. It is surprising how little food they really need once they are grown up.

What are you using for a substrate pan?

 

[KLowery88]

He's beautiful. You've done a wonderful job raising him. It is easy to get them to grow big and fast, but it is not easy to get them to develop properly. I wish we saw more veileds on here like your boy without stunted faces and twisted casques and bodies.

Thank you very much Janet! It's all thanks to places like this forum. I couldn't have done it without all the knowledge gathered on this site. With Veileds being so common and the usual "pet store" chameleon, they really seem to have gotten the short end of the stick. It's a shame since they're such beautiful animals with so much potential.

As they grow, their appetite slows down. Obesity is such a huge problem with captive, sedentary chameleons, so don't worry about a drop in appetite if all other indicators are he is doing well. I over feed and it is a husbandry mistake that is very hard for me to correct. Almost every one of my chameleons came to me as weak, parasite-ridden, dehydrated and emaciated wild caughts. Being obese isn't the end of the world for the boys, but it will be the kiss of death for my females. It is surprising how little food they really need once they are grown up.

I have the same problem to a certain degree. With the rescue chameleon that was my first, getting him to eat was a chore and for the few months I had him, he was on a liquid diet. I know now he was suffering from renal failure and gout and a whole host of issues, but I can't stop being a mother hen to this little guy because of it. He's still gaining weight, just at a slower pace, so I'm sure he knows what his body needs.

What are you using for a substrate pan?

The screen cage sits on top of a utility sink where the drainage layer, soil, leaf litter, and plants are. So far the bioactive bottom is working great, even with two four minute "rains" a day. I'm still working on making sure the plants are where they need to be. I had one die that I had planted under the area that gets the most water so I replaced it with some sheets of moss.

 

[guanagator]

Nice set up, Where did you find that sink? Looks like a perfect fit under the viv. Your little one is not so little anymore, he looks great!

 

[jajeanpierre]

Thank you very much Janet! It's all thanks to places like this forum. I couldn't have done it without all the knowledge gathered on this site. With Veileds being so common and the usual "pet store" chameleon, they really seem to have gotten the short end of the stick. It's a shame since they're such beautiful animals with so much potential.

They really are a beautiful animal but unfortunately so many get such a poor start in life before the egg is even laid--maybe even before the mother's egg was even laid--that most look really awful and ugly with their shortened, stunted faces.

I have a clutch of graciliors I am particularly proud of because they have the long shallow fore face of a wild caught. I always try to keep that picture of a wild caught in my mind because captive animals don't look like wild caughts and they should if we are doing it right.

 

[KLowery88]

Nice set up, Where did you find that sink? Looks like a perfect fit under the viv. Your little one is not so little anymore, he looks great!

Thank you! The sink is this one: http://www.homedepot.com/p/MUSTEE-U...ropylene-Floor-Mount-Laundry-Tub-14/202041453 I ordered it online and had it shipped to the Home Depot closest to me and picked it up there. There's a bit of overhang, but the zip ties keep it fastened after I drilled holes into the sink. I really like how easy it makes drainage, a five gallon painters bucket fits perfectly underneath the built in drain. It also pushes the cage up higher, which does require me to use a stool to do any high up maintenance, but I think a tree dwelling animal appreciates being as high as possible.

They really are a beautiful animal but unfortunately so many get such a poor start in life before the egg is even laid--maybe even before the mother's egg was even laid--that most look really awful and ugly with their shortened, stunted faces.

I have a clutch of graciliors I am particularly proud of because they have the long shallow fore face of a wild caught. I always try to keep that picture of a wild caught in my mind because captive animals don't look like wild caughts and they should if we are doing it right.

I definitely think it's great what you're doing with graciliors. You have a wonderful colony in the making once they all get acclimated and I hope you have tons of success breeding them and getting a healthy CB population going.

It's funny you mention the shortened faces. I wonder if that's a common problem with some CB reptiles, not just chameleons. I recently fostered a Bearded Dragon that had been found on the side of the road and then dropped off at the pet shelter where my husband volunteers, and she had a shortened, almost froggy face compared to my own Bearded Dragon. A lot of people on some Bearded Dragon group said that some BDs just "have faces like that" but I'm not so sure.

 

[guanagator]

Thanks! Saving this for future reference!

 

[jajeanpierre]

Thank you! The sink is this one: http://www.homedepot.com/p/MUSTEE-U...ropylene-Floor-Mount-Laundry-Tub-14/202041453 I ordered it online and had it shipped to the Home Depot closest to me and picked it up there. There's a bit of overhang, but the zip ties keep it fastened after I drilled holes into the sink. I really like how easy it makes drainage, a five gallon painters bucket fits perfectly underneath the built in drain. It also pushes the cage up higher, which does require me to use a stool to do any high up maintenance, but I think a tree dwelling animal appreciates being as high as possible.



I definitely think it's great what you're doing with graciliors. You have a wonderful colony in the making once they all get acclimated and I hope you have tons of success breeding them and getting a healthy CB population going.

It's funny you mention the shortened faces. I wonder if that's a common problem with some CB reptiles, not just chameleons. I recently fostered a Bearded Dragon that had been found on the side of the road and then dropped off at the pet shelter where my husband volunteers, and she had a shortened, almost froggy face compared to my own Bearded Dragon. A lot of people on some Bearded Dragon group said that some BDs just "have faces like that" but I'm not so sure.

Thank you. I have a fantastic gracilior collection right now and I am really happy to have so much genetic diversity in one place. I don't even know how many unrelated wild caught graciliors I have if you can believe it--but I think I have 5.6 new wild caughts from the May/June imports plus my 2.2 wild caughts from December/February last year. I also have maybe six others from these two recent imports that I'm not sure are quad or graciliors. I need to get my captive bred baby graciliors into pet homes so others can see how easy and wonderful they are so they can be established in captivity.

I suspect the shortened/stunted faces are a product of poor nutrition at all stages of development. There is a HUGE difference between the size and shape of captive bred macaws and their wild caught parents. A HUGE difference, even captive breds that are raised and fed by their parents. The captive bred ones tend to have large heads and are actually much smaller than the wild caughts. It is acknowledged that they are stunted. Wild caught macaws will never be imported into the US so people will soon forget what they are supposed to look like. Few people look at the species they work with in their natural environment so they don't even know what they are supposed to look like or even how big they are in the wild. I was surprised at how different a wild caught panther looked--head, body, everything. I remember one well respected CF member saying that captive chameleons have superior nutrition and are in better condition than any wild animal. Nothing could be further from the truth. My wild caughts are incredibly resilient and healthy even with their parasite loads, horrible injuries and being shipped for five days in a box/bag to get from Africa to the importers. People say that chameleons (reptiles) take a long time to heal but you should see how quickly many of the horrible face injuries are healing up with zero medical care.

These are tough tough animals. I really believe we have to be doing something horribly wrong in our husbandry if we manage to kill them or have sickly animals.

 

[KLowery88]

Thank you. I have a fantastic gracilior collection right now and I am really happy to have so much genetic diversity in one place. I don't even know how many unrelated wild caught graciliors I have if you can believe it--but I think I have 5.6 new wild caughts from the May/June imports plus my 2.2 wild caughts from December/February last year. I also have maybe six others from these two recent imports that I'm not sure are quad or graciliors. I need to get my captive bred baby graciliors into pet homes so others can see how easy and wonderful they are so they can be established in captivity.

I suspect the shortened/stunted faces are a product of poor nutrition at all stages of development. There is a HUGE difference between the size and shape of captive bred macaws and their wild caught parents. A HUGE difference, even captive breds that are raised and fed by their parents. The captive bred ones tend to have large heads and are actually much smaller than the wild caughts. It is acknowledged that they are stunted. Wild caught macaws will never be imported into the US so people will soon forget what they are supposed to look like. Few people look at the species they work with in their natural environment so they don't even know what they are supposed to look like or even how big they are in the wild. I was surprised at how different a wild caught panther looked--head, body, everything. I remember one well respected CF member saying that captive chameleons have superior nutrition and are in better condition than any wild animal. Nothing could be further from the truth. My wild caughts are incredibly resilient and healthy even with their parasite loads, horrible injuries and being shipped for five days in a box/bag to get from Africa to the importers. People say that chameleons (reptiles) take a long time to heal but you should see how quickly many of the horrible face injuries are healing up with zero medical care.

These are tough tough animals. I really believe we have to be doing something horribly wrong in our husbandry if we manage to kill them or have sickly animals.

I know I want to be an owner of one of your graciliors, but right now my husband and I are potentially looking at a long distance move in a year and I want to limit the number of animals I'm going to have to deal with. Definitely in the future though, because they're one of the most impressive looking chameleons out there. It's wonderful that you have so many individuals. Healthy genetic diversity is so important.

I haven't paid too much attention to Panthers, but what kind of difference did you see? Just more robust in structure?

Chameleons get called delicate a lot, but I really don't think so at all. Even the CB animals I've seen fighting illness or mangled by MBD, and I couldn't believe it. Seeing my first chameleon, who was a rescue, fight through gout and renal failure, still trying to display and move through the, no doubt terrible, pain of gout in all his joints made me really respect his will to live.

 

[jajeanpierre]

I know I want to be an owner of one of your graciliors, but right now my husband and I are potentially looking at a long distance move in a year and I want to limit the number of animals I'm going to have to deal with. Definitely in the future though, because they're one of the most impressive looking chameleons out there. It's wonderful that you have so many individuals. Healthy genetic diversity is so important.

I haven't paid too much attention to Panthers, but what kind of difference did you see? Just more robust in structure?

Chameleons get called delicate a lot, but I really don't think so at all. Even the CB animals I've seen fighting illness or mangled by MBD, and I couldn't believe it. Seeing my first chameleon, who was a rescue, fight through gout and renal failure, still trying to display and move through the, no doubt terrible, pain of gout in all his joints made me really respect his will to live.

Be careful about putting too much weight on their refusing to die. It often just means a terrible, terrible long lingering death. I witnessed it first hand how bad an animal could get yet if you just supported it with fluids and some nutrition they just don't die and in fact get stronger. They can fool the vets, too. After my experience with my beautiful QiuLong, believe me, I'll be a lot quicker to euthanize. I think it is cruel for people to continue on with gravid animals with broken and twisted limbs from MBD.

I'm not a panther person. Everyone is going to hate me for saying this but I find panthers to be kind of an unattractive chameleon if not for some of their colors and nice colors are not guaranteed. That was until I saw an adult wild caught newly imported panther. He was magnificent, and it wasn't his color that impressed me although he did glow. Captive bred animals have short faces and deep heads. Their bodies are just king of blocky. Stuffy. There is nothing athletic about them, plus they seem to have these really ugly bloated casques that look as if they are going to split open. (The importer told me that ugly bloated casque was from a diet high in superworms but I don't know if that is true.) The wild caught on the other hand looked like an athlete, almost like a big cat if that makes any sense. Have you seen pictures of my Mickey Malthe? Like that. Lithe. I've never seen that in one picture of a captive bred panther. Plus the head shape was very different, long and shallow with a lot of fore face. The rostral process was different, too.

I hope all the panther fans don't jump on me. I'm afraid you'll never convince me a panther is worth giving cage space to except maybe that magnificent Snowflake that BobCochran had.

I suspect that difference I see in the wild caught panthers and domestically bred ones shows up in all species of captive bred chameleons. I sure see it in veileds. I suspect it might be diet related, but there might be a fitness component as well. Structure is molded and changed by the physical demands put on it.

i don't know the answer; it's only my observations of a limited number of animals and pictures.

 

[jajeanpierre]

I know I want to be an owner of one of your graciliors, but right now my husband and I are potentially looking at a long distance move in a year and I want to limit the number of animals I'm going to have to deal with. /QUOTE]

Oh, animals can be dealt with. I moved from Saudi Arabia to Canada with five parrots, one dog, two cats and four guinea pigs. (Yes, we brought the old guinea pigs because just abandoning/euthanizing them for a few hundred dollars was not a lesson I wanted my kids to learn.) Then we moved to the US VIrgin Islands and now to Texas. I had to charter an aircraft to get my animals off St. Croix if you can believe it. Chameleons are a piece of cake. Big parrots are an incredible challenge to move because you can't pack up their cages until you have a place with cages all set up to receive them. I agree, life would have been a lot easier without my moving all my animals around the world and back again.

 

[KLowery88]

Be careful about putting too much weight on their refusing to die. It often just means a terrible, terrible long lingering death. I witnessed it first hand how bad an animal could get yet if you just supported it with fluids and some nutrition they just don't die and in fact get stronger. They can fool the vets, too. After my experience with my beautiful QiuLong, believe me, I'll be a lot quicker to euthanize. I think it is cruel for people to continue on with gravid animals with broken and twisted limbs from MBD.

That is such an important point, and one I can't help thinking of. I had no husbandry knowledge about chameleons when I agreed to take in the rescue, and I had not owned a healthy chameleon to see what behavior was normal, and what was from illness and pain. He went to the vet every other week for some issue or another. Eventually he became ill enough that I had that conversation with my vet, who told me that although we could try treating the gout, his was so advanced that it would only be prolonging the inveitable, so I decided to euthinze. It was still a very hard decision, but I wonder now if it was one I should have made earlier. He must have been in so much pain.

I'm not a panther person. Everyone is going to hate me for saying this but I find panthers to be kind of an unattractive chameleon if not for some of their colors and nice colors are not guaranteed. That was until I saw an adult wild caught newly imported panther. He was magnificent, and it wasn't his color that impressed me although he did glow. Captive bred animals have short faces and deep heads. Their bodies are just king of blocky. Stuffy. There is nothing athletic about them, plus they seem to have these really ugly bloated casques that look as if they are going to split open. (The importer told me that ugly bloated casque was from a diet high in superworms but I don't know if that is true.) The wild caught on the other hand looked like an athlete, almost like a big cat if that makes any sense. Have you seen pictures of my Mickey Malthe? Like that. Lithe. I've never seen that in one picture of a captive bred panther. Plus the head shape was very different, long and shallow with a lot of fore face. The rostral process was different, too.

I hope all the panther fans don't jump on me. I'm afraid you'll never convince me a panther is worth giving cage space to except maybe that magnificent Snowflake that BobCochran had.

I suspect that difference I see in the wild caught panthers and domestically bred ones shows up in all species of captive bred chameleons. I sure see it in veileds. I suspect it might be diet related, but there might be a fitness component as well. Structure is molded and changed by the physical demands put on it.

i don't know the answer; it's only my observations of a limited number of animals and pictures.

I wonder if poor muscle development plays a part. Mickey Malthe looks like a greyhound, which makes sense having the wild to roam and hunt in. Obesity is pretty common in just about any reptile species in captivity, like you said. Too much food, not enough space to work it off. The diet Chameleons are fed in captivity is different too, more grub and ground dwelling insects instead of the leaner flying insects they would normally get.

I think I remember noticing that the rostral processes of imports is often longer... I wonder if it could also be also related to UVB. Perhaps not enough UVB exposure while growing? Al has been under a 12% Arcadia bulb since he was the size of my thumb, although it seems weaker bulbs are recommended. It is on top of a 48x24x24 though, so he's had plenty of space to regulate how much he wants to be exposed.

Oh, animals can be dealt with. I moved from Saudi Arabia to Canada with five parrots, one dog, two cats and four guinea pigs. (Yes, we brought the old guinea pigs because just abandoning/euthanizing them for a few hundred dollars was not a lesson I wanted my kids to learn.) Then we moved to the US VIrgin Islands and now to Texas. I had to charter an aircraft to get my animals off St. Croix if you can believe it. Chameleons are a piece of cake. Big parrots are an incredible challenge to move because you can't pack up their cages until you have a place with cages all set up to receive them. I agree, life would have been a lot easier without my moving all my animals around the world and back again.

I don't have anything as much of a handful like parrots at least! But we do have three cats, two Blue Tongue Skinks, one Boa Constrictor, one Bearded Dragon, a Crested Gecko, and then the Veiled. Our move would only likely be from North Florida to perhaps somewhere in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, so nowhere near as bad as Saudi Arabia to Canada. I remember your story about dealing with importing your ivory family heirloom and that sounded like a nightmare.

 

[jajeanpierre]

That is such an important point, and one I can't help thinking of. I had no husbandry knowledge about chameleons when I agreed to take in the rescue, and I had not owned a healthy chameleon to see what behavior was normal, and what was from illness and pain. He went to the vet every other week for some issue or another. Eventually he became ill enough that I had that conversation with my vet, who told me that although we could try treating the gout, his was so advanced that it would only be prolonging the inveitable, so I decided to euthinze. It was still a very hard decision, but I wonder now if it was one I should have made earlier. He must have been in so much pain.



I wonder if poor muscle development plays a part. Mickey Malthe looks like a greyhound, which makes sense having the wild to roam and hunt in. Obesity is pretty common in just about any reptile species in captivity, like you said. Too much food, not enough space to work it off. The diet Chameleons are fed in captivity is different too, more grub and ground dwelling insects instead of the leaner flying insects they would normally get.

I think I remember noticing that the rostral processes of imports is often longer... I wonder if it could also be also related to UVB. Perhaps not enough UVB exposure while growing? Al has been under a 12% Arcadia bulb since he was the size of my thumb, although it seems weaker bulbs are recommended. It is on top of a 48x24x24 though, so he's had plenty of space to regulate how much he wants to be exposed.



I don't have anything as much of a handful like parrots at least! But we do have three cats, two Blue Tongue Skinks, one Boa Constrictor, one Bearded Dragon, a Crested Gecko, and then the Veiled. Our move would only likely be from North Florida to perhaps somewhere in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, so nowhere near as bad as Saudi Arabia to Canada. I remember your story about dealing with importing your ivory family heirloom and that sounded like a nightmare.

That's not a move!!! That's a long drive.

You are probably right light plays a part in it but a lot of breeders have their animals outside in the summer at least. I can't believe the lights are all that good, even when I buy the best I can (Arcadia 12%). People don't realize just how strong the sun is at the tropics and the sun is even stronger the higher up the mountain you get. I also think we are doing the cages all wrong. I think they want horizontal space, not as much vertical. I think some go a bit crazy and shut down when they don't have enough horizontal space--Melleri comes to mind and maybe my own Mickey Malthe.

 

[KLowery88]

That's not a move!!! That's a long drive.

You are probably right light plays a part in it but a lot of breeders have their animals outside in the summer at least. I can't believe the lights are all that good, even when I buy the best I can (Arcadia 12%). People don't realize just how strong the sun is at the tropics and the sun is even stronger the higher up the mountain you get. I also think we are doing the cages all wrong. I think they want horizontal space, not as much vertical. I think some go a bit crazy and shut down when they don't have enough horizontal space--Melleri comes to mind and maybe my own Mickey Malthe.

It almost seems like it would be better to have something horizontally oriented, then have that on a tall shelf so they get that height they want. I know I'm likely going to be getting Al the larger Dragon Strand atrium as he gets older. Already he uses the entire cage and I can't imagine he'll have the same use of space when he's full grown.