Need Help!

[Jack Timmons]

I have a 6 month old male veiled chameleon. He never eats, and all of his crickets and calcium powder goes to waste. Im really sick of wasting crickets. He is terrified of anything i do, so cup feeding is out of the question. I cant move him to a smaller cage so he can get to his food. His cage is 2ft by 2ft by 4ft. There are plenty of vines and a ficus plant. I need help! Can i feed him something else? Can i make him not hate me?

 

[Battlecat29]

Try different food items, my panther never goes for crickets but always accepts hornworms -

 

[carol5208]

Put the cup in there and he will have to get used to you eventually. Sooner or later he will figure out the cup is for food and you are not reaching in there to do him harm. There are many other things you can feed: roaches, silkworms, superworms, stick bugs, butterworms, calciworms and hornworms are the most popular that I can think of. You can also feed moths, dragon flies and some butterflies but you have to be careful as I believe some butterflies may be poisonous. I myself have never fed butterflies, but mine love moths and dragon flies. I live in Florida so they are available to me as I understand as you are in a cold part of the country you will not be able to find those until summertime.

 

[Carlton]

I have a 6 month old male veiled chameleon. He never eats, and all of his crickets and calcium powder goes to waste. Im really sick of wasting crickets. He is terrified of anything i do, so cup feeding is out of the question. I cant move him to a smaller cage so he can get to his food. His cage is 2ft by 2ft by 4ft. There are plenty of vines and a ficus plant. I need help! Can i feed him something else? Can i make him not hate me?

You CAN feed him in that cage and you CAN feed out of some sort of container! If he's that scared of everything the first thing to do is give him a very secluded habitat where he can watch and hunt his prey without being watched. He's probably so preoccupied with your anxious, hovering presence or activity around the cage that he just won't focus on hunting. When I have a very shy cham I make sure I can hardly find him in the cage. Just fill it with bushy foliage. Could you show us a picture of his setup? Another thing that can help is a different type of container. Some young chams don't like hitting the tip of their tongue on the hard sides of a cup, or if they have once they try to avoid doing it again. They get a little anxious or confused by the container, not the feeders in it. That cage should have enough space for you to wedge a larger plastic shoebox or storage box below where he tends to perch. Put a few feeders in the box (not so many that their constant motion is confusing) along with a bit of fresh gutload. Leave it there during the day but remove it during spraying and at night. Don't overdo the dusting so the crix look white. If you have to, you can put a little dust in the feeders' container and gently press the crix into it so it sticks to their under sides, not the top where it is more visible. Another trick I've used is to grind dried peas into a fine powder and dust the crix so they look a bit green. Chams love green feeders. Sometimes it works.

Then leave him alone for the day.