How often on vitamins?

[ChameleonClem]

how often should you give vitamin dust?
I plan on getting a vieled chameleon with the basic diet being crickets and lettuce. (Along with all the other stuff they need less often)

 

[ChamLB]

We do multivitamin every other week. The week we don't do d3.

 

[Andee]

how often should you give vitamin dust?
I plan on getting a vieled chameleon with the basic diet being crickets and lettuce. (Along with all the other stuff they need less often)

This is a really bad diet for your chameleons. Not so much the crickets as long as you have an amazing gut load for the crickets and get them from either a really good provider or breed your own. But the lettuce provides no nutritional value. If you are going to feed greens then go for something like mustard greens, Tuscan or Dino kale, dandelion greens, steamed butternut squash, some fruit every now and then. They also should have at least 4 feeders regularly available to them so you can rotate them through out the week. I use six that I raise and have 4 others that I buy so I have 10 regularly. I also feed others less regularly. The thing is, if you don't have a varied diet they can get defecient in things whether you provide dustings well or not. And even when you provide good gutload, because captive bred insects will never be as good as what they can get in the wild so we compensate with really healthy feeders and as many different types as we can provide along with the dustings.

Also without regular changing feeders it is very normal for chameleons to go on hunger strikes more often because they are bored. In the wild they could very well eat a different insect every time they get something. Which means if they have a good day could have five different feeders in one day.

And if this sounds harsh I don't mean to at all. I am sorry if I did. O.O I haven't reread it and just wanted to make sure I got this out before sleep. I will come back after sleep and make sure I clear up anything that may have been confusing tomorrow. <3 keep questioning, it's the best way to learn ^^

 

[ChameleonClem]

This is a really bad diet for your chameleons. Not so much the crickets as long as you have an amazing gut load for the crickets and get them from either a really good provider or breed your own. But the lettuce provides no nutritional value. If you are going to feed greens then go for something like mustard greens, Tuscan or Dino kale, dandelion greens, steamed butternut squash, some fruit every now and then. They also should have at least 4 feeders regularly available to them so you can rotate them through out the week. I use six that I raise and have 4 others that I buy so I have 10 regularly. I also feed others less regularly. The thing is, if you don't have a varied diet they can get defecient in things whether you provide dustings well or not. And even when you provide good gutload, because captive bred insects will never be as good as what they can get in the wild so we compensate with really healthy feeders and as many different types as we can provide along with the dustings.

Also without regular changing feeders it is very normal for chameleons to go on hunger strikes more often because they are bored. In the wild they could very well eat a different insect every time they get something. Which means if they have a good day could have five different feeders in one day.

And if this sounds harsh I don't mean to at all. I am sorry if I did. O.O I haven't reread it and just wanted to make sure I got this out before sleep. I will come back after sleep and make sure I clear up anything that may have been confusing tomorrow. <3 keep questioning, it's the best way to learn ^^

Crickets were the staple of his diet but I also fed him cut up night crawlers and bee larve and other moth larve type things alot. ive never tried kale but i gave him lots of dandilion greens. I also tried relentlessly to get him to try fruit and things like that (didnt know they could have squash) but i couldnt ever get him to try anything else which addmittedly is why i let him have lettuce more often plus i usually have lettuce even when dandilions arent growing. I asumed lettuce had some nutritional value, so thats my mistake . But he also ate alot of the plants id put him on (mainly just his scefflera) rarely some of a pathos vine. I always checked lists to see if something was poisonious before i fed it to him Tottally agree about asking questions lol
Also thanks for the harshness dissclaimer lol, i wasnt going to reply till i saw that some people are so mean about it they wont really try to help you.

Ps my crickets were gut loaded . And hed get some sort of worms at least twice a week. He never went on hunger strike except once before a full shed but only missed a day and a half ( i was feeding him two meals when he was young, id feed him a meal then let some loose in his cage to chase(not nessicarily in that order))
One person said every other week, do you think thats good? I think thats what i did before.. possible every three weeks. Its been a while
Btw i know alot of people like dubia roaches but my mom refuses to have any so unfortunately, theyre not optional.

 

[JaguarShark]

Have you looked at the basic caresheet on here? - https://www.chameleonforums.com/care/caresheets/veiled/

 

[Andee]

Every other week for what? And yeah sorry about the short kind of way I responded last night, was just kind of trying to respond fast before passing out XD. I am not sure if night crawlers are the best for chams? But then again I have not ever had one who ate them. And as long as they are from a healthy source and easily small enough to eat I don't see what's wrong with it honestly, they are supposedly good feeders for blueys and stuff so if you can get your Cham to eat them I see nothing wrong with it. They don't have any more slime than the snails we feed our guys sometimes. Where in the world did you get bee larvae? that sounds like an interesting thing to try. Though of course I would only do it if it was commercially raised due to our current bee problems. Dubia roaches aren't the only possibility for home raised feeders if you want to and save some money. You could do a colony of captive bred isopods. But remember if you start with wild caughts breed them and separate the babies and only use the wild ones for breeding. Wild ones are dangerous to feed off due to the amount of heavy metals that collect in their bodies. Isopods are a great source of calcium and a good regular feeder. Super worms are rather easy to breed. Might want to look into silkworms too. I have no issue with those. That would give you a few to have on hand. It's always good to have some of your own that you are breeding just in case of an emergency ^^

 

[kinyonga]

ChameleionClem...are you dusting with a phosphorous-free calcium powder at most feedings? Are you dusting twice a month with a phosphorous-free calcium/D3 powder? You should be dusting with a vitamin powder that contains a beta carotene prOformed source of vitamin A. If needed you can also dustmwith a vitamin powder that has a prEformed source of vitamin A...but it builds up in the system so be very careful with it.

I feed/gutload my crickets with a wide assortment of greens and veggies such as dandelion greens, kale, collards, endive, escarole, carrots, squash, zucchini, sweet potato, sweet red pepper, etc and a bit of fruit such as berries, melon, apple, pear. These same things can be fed to the veiled in addition to the insects.

 

[ChameleonClem]

Every other week for what? And yeah sorry about the short kind of way I responded last night, was just kind of trying to respond fast before passing out XD. I am not sure if night crawlers are the best for chams? But then again I have not ever had one who ate them. And as long as they are from a healthy source and easily small enough to eat I don't see what's wrong with it honestly, they are supposedly good feeders for blueys and stuff so if you can get your Cham to eat them I see nothing wrong with it. They don't have any more slime than the snails we feed our guys sometimes. Where in the world did you get bee larvae? that sounds like an interesting thing to try. Though of course I would only do it if it was commercially raised due to our current bee problems. Dubia roaches aren't the only possibility for home raised feeders if you want to and save some money. You could do a colony of captive bred isopods. But remember if you start with wild caughts breed them and separate the babies and only use the wild ones for breeding. Wild ones are dangerous to feed off due to the amount of heavy metals that collect in their bodies. Isopods are a great source of calcium and a good regular feeder. Super worms are rather easy to breed. Might want to look into silkworms too. I have no issue with those. That would give you a few to have on hand. It's always good to have some of your own that you are breeding just in case of an emergency ^^

Every other week for calicium powder, i dont remember if it had vitamins in it though im pretty sure it did, ill have to pull it out. Obviously i still have tons of stuff to research . Its scary how many things i was doing wrong when i was so terrified of messing up lol
And its no problem, but thanks for leaving the warning about if it seemed harsh lol.
And our pet shop had them at the time, for what idk but they had them and i figired as picky as my cham was id give it a try, never thought the slime would cause ishues, so i never gave it a second thought, but .
And never fear about the bee larve, theyre not actually bees and honestly, i dont know why people call them that. Theyre waxworms my guy loved them. And i never thought about isopods ill have to look into that, i dont know anything about them. Except how entertaining a good fossile of one is
And I definitely like the idea of breeding my own for rain days. My chameleon was the poster child for being picky, not for lack of trying to feed him a varried diet. And silk worms noted. I never tried super worms because i didnt think he was big enough, i got rid of him when he was coming up on a year because someone else could provide better care, and hed get super stressed even just tossing some food in the pen for him to eat. Not to mention trying to let him out to free range. I never forced him omt my hand or anything.. sometimes i wonder if he was wild caught but i got him as a baby guess it was just his personality. Heres a picture of him a few months after i gave him away to someone who had an entire room made into a mini forest for his chams to free range 24/7.

(Yes he got that mad by anyone walking by his cage,i moved his cage to less busy places, moved him higher etc, but he was just always unhappy )

 

[ChameleonClem]

ChameleionClem...are you dusting with a phosphorous-free calcium powder at most feedings? Are you dusting twice a month with a phosphorous-free calcium/D3 powder? You should be dusting with a vitamin powder that contains a beta carotene prOformed source of vitamin A. If needed you can also dustmwith a vitamin powder that has a prEformed source of vitamin A...but it builds up in the system so be very careful with it.

I feed/gutload my crickets with a wide assortment of greens and veggies such as dandelion greens, kale, collards, endive, escarole, carrots, squash, zucchini, sweet potato, sweet red pepper, etc and a bit of fruit such as berries, melon, apple, pear. These same things can be fed to the veiled in addition to the insects.

Ill look for a better array of vitamins this time ( i dont currently have a chameleon) i always tried to get him to eat something other than just basic leaf type foods and bugs but he refused no matter how i tried to give them.
But what i had/have is a phosphorus free calcium, im not sure if it had vitamins in it, its been a while.
And i think id give that too him every two weeks.
And ill remember the vit. A warning