CuttletheFish
Member
- Your Chameleon - Harriet is a female veiled chameleon. I've had her for about 2 months now.
- Handling - daily for the past 2 weeks (to administer liquid calcium)
- Feeding - she is fed daily a staple diet if 6-10 crickets with wax worms, meal worms, and hornworms substituted for variation. She hasn't eaten anything for the past week and a half. No interest in even the horn worms (her favorite)
- Supplements - repticalcium with D3 twice a week. Flukes liquid vitamin twice a month. Repticalcium without D3 on all other days
- Watering - I must by hand 2-3 times a day for 2-3 minutes. I've rarely seen her drink but this week was the only time I've ever seen signs of dehydration
- Fecal Description - as of this past week her droppings have been mostly white with some of that fun goopy stuff that comes out with it. No black/brown parts but she also hasnt eaten.
- History - I believe she is a year and a half old although I'm not certain. She was the pet of a family friends child. That's about all I have for her history other than when I got her, her uv bulb had never been changed in her lifetime.
Cage Info:
- Cage Type - screen cage. Nit sure of the dimensions? Likely 1x1.5x3 but I'm working on getting her a bigger one. I wasn't totally expecting to take her in.
- Lighting - I'm sorry, I cant remember what kind I've bought and the boxes are long gone. She has a new uvb bulb and baking lamp now. Lights are on from 7:30am to 7:30pm
- Temperature - the hotest she can get to stays about 85F and the lowest is 70F. At night, it lowers to 70 in the summer and if we have her through winter, it would then be 65.
- Humidity - I try to keep it between 30 and 50. Theres a small humidifier next to her enclosure. That plus daily misting keeps it steady
- Plants - no live plants. All plastic
- Placement - on a desk in my bedroom, away from any vents or doors. Throughout the day the room stays dark and quiet.
- Location - midwest United States. Specifically, Illinois
Current Problem - This may be a long one so I'm sorry. I recently acquired two veiled Chameleons (both have the exact same setup) from the same person. One (named Gretchen) seems to be perfectly fine but the other (Harriet) was showing some problems. I noticed she was falling often and would occasionally twitch and tremor. I took both to my vet for a wellness check. One checked out just fine but I brought up my concerns for Harriet. My vet basically went back to do some reading, gave her a calcium shot and gave me some liquid calcium to administer to her 2x daily and we would see what would happen. I didn't get much more info than that. I wasn't too happy with that lol so I found another very, much more experienced with Chams, for a 2nd opinion. Last Monday I took her to see the new vet. By this time, Harriet's appetite had started to decrease. She conducted an ultrasound to check her follicles, and concluded that they were rather large for a cham of her size (about 75g). She recommended doubling the liquid calcium intake daily and a recheck in a week. Today was her recheck. She hasn't eaten in the time since seeing her last. She is still falling often but the tremors seemed to have improved. Upon checking the ultrasound, her follicles haven't changed in size at all. She has lost about 3 grams as well in the past week (72g) As of right now, this vet recommends surgery soon so she doesn't get weaker and predicts a high chance of fatality without the surgery but still only a 50% chance of making it through the surgery because they are so delicate.
I was hoping to get some insight if anyone has been through something similar? Or what would those with more experience do in this situation? Is it worth it to go through with the surgery?
Pics: one is of Harriet outside about 3-4 weeks ago, the other is her right now. She was basking before I bothered her to snap the pic. Her colors are still bright, she just goes brown to get all warm and toasty
