How many crickets should I feed him a day

[Femaleorange]

My family is interested in buying veiled chameleon, but before we do we wanted to do for research on the bug he would eat. If we do buy one we want to be completely prepared. I was wondering how many crickets and other bugs should he eat a day, starting from a baby to an adult? Also from what I’ve been told, you should feed them the smaller crickets when they are a baby. When do you switch them to a larger size?

 

[jamest0o0]

Just feed based off width(not length) of bug smaller than space between chams eyes. Feed them as much as they'll eat everyday until they are an adult. Then you can slow down on feeding.

 

[kinyonga]

I usually feed veiled and panther hatchlings as much as they can eat in a couple of minutes at each feeding. Make sure you feed the insects and gutload them well before feeding them to the chameleon. Size should always be as described above for crickets. If you can buy small superworms or silkworms or other small/appropriate sized insects you can feed the chameleon some of them and some crickets. Variety in the diet is good.
Once they are 6 or so months old I switch to feeding every other day. I go by the size so it's hard to say exactly when to switch to every other day. Once a female gets her adult colors you have to be careful not to overfeed them constantly. I recommend starting off with a male to avoid reproductive issues.

It's important that you know about proper lighting, proper temperatures, proper supplementing, gutloading/feeding insects, methods of hydration too!

 

[jagmom98]

there are care sheets on here that will get you started. Very informative.

 

[NickTide]

First of all.... Thank you for researching first. Too many people get to Petco and come home with a kit and a cham not knowing that the cham will outgrow the kit, the light isn't adequate, they need a lot of care and they eat more than what most people would ever imagine. And that's if you're lucky enough to get a healthy cham from a pet shop.

The posts above me have it covered well... especially about the care sheets. Click on the "Resources" tab (white letters with the green background) at the top of the page.

It is important to understand that crickets alone are not an adequate food source. I would say you need two staples that make up the majority of their food and a few others to round out the diet.

I personally would not keep chams again unless I was raising at least some of its food. I raised veildes 20 years ago and for 2 veildes I went through a box of 500 crickets in a week and a half. After that I fed super worms until the next shipment came in (2-4 days later). Average life span was about 1.5 to 2 years. We didn't know much and roaches weren't really available. That doesnt mean they ate 500 crickets because a lot died. These days I raise 6 different bugs for my chams.

If you are getting veildes, dubias are a great staple to raise but if you are going with a panther, consider orange heads. Panthers tend to get tired of dubias Start your culture early. My orange heads still aren't producing the way I want them to because I started with a few nymphs. Black soldier fly larvae (aka repti worms, calci worms, phoenix worms) are a great staple. If you mail order them , they are reasonably priced. Round that off with gut loaded crickets and you have a good base diet to which you can add a different flavor every now and again.

If you get a baby cham, fruit flies are a pretty good diet.