Help!!!Panther eats WAY too much!

[Warrix642]

I know the title sounds kinda wierd but...I have gotten a 5 month old male panther recently that is a pig! I HAVE TO feed him 12-15 ex large crickets(some days more) everyday (superworm treats a few times a month) or he will really try to eat his fake plants. Its driving me crazy he is soooooooooo fat he is WAY bigger than my 8 month old! Should I keep feeding him so much, or let him try to eat his plants? His cage/temps/lights/supplementing are all fine. What could I put in there that he wouldnt try to eat to replace real/fake plants????

Thanks
Dustin

 

[jannb]

Try feeding him some collard greens and smaller crickets. Do you offer any other feeders besides crickets? They need a variety of feeders.

 

[jojackson]

lose the fake plants, which is worth more?
Feed it a normal diet or it;ll never be an old chameleon.
Recheck the basking temp, get it tested for parasites.
Use real (safe) plants, offer greens as suggested.


Do you use a dripper? Is its urate white? What do you gutload the crickets with?
Seems to me it may be trying to aquire more moisture. If its only water source is
misted water on fake plants, that may explain
why its trying to eat them.

 

[sandrachameleon]

ditto

Replace fake with real, as well as providing "good" leafy veggies and such for it to nibble
ensure temp is right
ensure sufficient water is provided
reduce available feeders if you think it is eating too much (there you do NOT HAVE to over feed it - you are in control)
offer other feeders
Review how you gutload

 

[jannb]

I agree with Joe on the parasites. I'd get a fecal.

 

[Cainschams]

I love this post!

Laurie,

This is a hard topic to give good advice in. I'm not gonna tell you if you feed to much ore not. I only want to tell you some things I think that are important with growing up chameleons. I think there is a big difference in growing up chameleons in captivity and
them growing up in nature. In nature they benefit from growing as fast as possible as this lowers their chance of being eaten and the improves the change for the species to survive. So in nature they will eat as much as they can and grow as fast as they can.

Problem in captivity is we can't give them all good stuff they will get in the wild. So we try to compensate. To achieve this I believe it is good to let them grow a little slower with as good food as possible and feed them not every day. In this way I make sure they stay interested in food and start hunting. I'm not sure this is the right way but in the past I did feed as much as possible and my chameleons did grow very very fast. But in the end I found they where not as long living as I wanted (specially my females). Now I feed less they still grouw quite fast compared to other people I know but they live longer and seem much stronger to me.

On the other hand feeding a lot and growing very fast increases the chance of MBD as they grow faster they need to get more calcium for their bones. I did have this problems in the past with my hoehnelii's.

My only advice whould be to also have a day without food this is really not bad. Chameleons in the wild don't find food every day.

I hope this helped a little bit.

Further it's good to hear he eats that good. Quadricornis is a lovely species to bad the don't seem to fit real good in my chameleon room.

This is from one of Laurie's threads. Growing too fast?

 

[joshua n janet]

tht so cool ive never herd of some thing like tht i think thts awsome

 

[jojackson]

A sound post from Damaranum .

 

[kinyonga]

I haven't heard of panthers eating greens as a rule...but its always safer IMHO to use real non-toxic well-washed (both sides of the leaves) plants in chameleon cages. (Panthers have been known to chew on branches though.)

Male panthers can consume a lot of crickets and not get fat...just watch that he's not looking too plump...and I wouldn't increase it because you don't want to overdo it. He might cut down when he reaches full growth.