Hand fed/ friendly male veiled (or others)

[Meezerkoko]

Hi there, this is my first post on CF and I just wanted to see how other people's experiences have been with hand feeding and having nice friendly chams. I ask because I actually have a lovely friendly 1 year old male veiled. He has been hand fed all his life and he will come up to me when I get near the cage and very rarely flares up and gets colored. He did go through a phase where if I went into his cage he'd thrash a bit and hiss but he's over that now and will actually crawl out onto me or onto the door and then onto me, it's very cute that he's not as territorial and angry as most male veileds I've seen and had contact with. His name is Rygel and he's a lovely growing boy ;D I'll be posting more later but thanks for any input! I'll also post pics of the lovely boy because I recently got some of him all fired up and he has some lovely turquoise going on!

Anyways HI!

 

[Carlton]

Their individual temperment varies quite a bit. Hand feeding always helps, but it may not be the only reason he's so mellow. He's just being himself. I've had wc melleri who were very friendly from the start but I've also had a couple who were really evil.

 

[SaintJimmy]

Aww, that sounds awesome!

My veiled recently moved into his new big cage.. He is around 7 months-8 months now. (He was due for the upgrade a while ago)

He used to turn brown and run away whenever I walked over to him. Now I hand fed him for around 3 months and he would tolerate me being in his space.

He started trying to escape from the tiny cage (again, he was due for an upgrade... which he got ) and I would stop him midway..

He would hiss and snap but I would slowly raise my hand underneath him and handle him when he wanted out.

Now he is moderately okay with being held but is still fussy.

 

[squiggles13]

That's very cool. We have a male nosy be who is very friendly and he doesn't mind being held, but our female gets kinda pissy (we've had her approx a week). She gets startled very easily and flares up when you move too quickly.

 

[Meezerkoko]

Yeah my boy sometimes gets startled but he's a pretty mellow boy for the most part. I feel very lucky because I really thought he was beginning to change into his 'adult' personality when he started getting all moody but it turned out to be just a phase that lasted little over a month.

He wasn't so friendly before I got him though (he was 3 months old when I got him) because he was most likely perpetually stressed, he was living in his adult cage of 4'x2'x2' and all he had was a fake potted bamboo plant to cling to. It's 'branches' if you can call the little fake plastic twigs that, were not even strong enough to really support his weight. He had no real security and nowhere to hide. After I got him here I gave him 3 nice live plants (all cham safe and yes he did eat part of the one he sleeps in) 2 of which have since died because his main plant blocks the light from hitting the bottom where the other plants are.

I plan on free ranging him part of the time once I move and have space for some nice sized house plants. I also plan on getting a panther of some kind then.

And one last thing, I attempted to give him a bit of romaine for the first time today (I sprayed a bit of calcium onto it for extra nutrition) and he actually shot his tongue out to get the pieces from my fingers, I gently rolled small 1-2" pieces between my finger and thumb and rolled it back and forth, emulating a worm and he took quite a few pieces. He probably would have taken more had I offered. Now I need to look into what veggies have the highest nutrition and take advantage of the fact that he'll eat them. How often should I offer greens (and what other plant matter will they eat? Fruit?)?

Anyways thanks for your kind words and thanks for reading my ramble and for future replies!

 

[Blueberry2223]

It sounds like you are an addict like the rest of us!! Welcome to the forums!!

 

[lovepicasso]

Welcome to the forum, you will be able to learn all you need on this site....So happy you have a boy you can handle and love on......my veiled Picasso is very sweet and loving, he has been hand fed since Christmas day because
he burned his tongue very bad on a light bulb that day and his lost most all of it......love to see pics of your boy.