NMBD...veiled chameleons...

[kinyonga]

"It can be concluded that the indoor rearing of veiled chameleons fed with locusts gut-loaded with 12% Ca, dusted with vitamin A (250,000 IU/kg) (75 mg/kg) and cholecalciferol (25,000 IU/kg) (0.625 mg/kg) immediately before feeding, and provision of long (10 h/d), low irradiation exposure (3–120 μW/cm2 UVB) provided the best combination for the prevention of NMBD"...
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/140/11/1923/4630486

 

[SharpShooter]

"It can be concluded that the indoor rearing of veiled chameleons fed with locusts gut-loaded with 12% Ca, dusted with vitamin A (250,000 IU/kg) (75 mg/kg) and cholecalciferol (25,000 IU/kg) (0.625 mg/kg) immediately before feeding, and provision of long (10 h/d), low irradiation exposure (3–120 μW/cm2 UVB) provided the best combination for the prevention of NMBD"...
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/140/11/1923/4630486

Confirmation of what we know to be best practice but how do we get 12% ca into your gut load if using fresh?

I use locust a lot but find they don't tend to go for dry preperations or cooked up bug burger etc., preferring fresh ingredients every time.

Over 48 hrs of gut loading and the locust start to take on a much darker colour and add a lot of body mass. After a week they are very dark, having fully absorbed the nutrition available.

I usually buy 'medium' which in fact are pretty small and grow them. Not only are they fully gut loaded when they are fed out but you also get around 3X-4X as many as buying larger in the beginning.

I do the same with crickets and roaches too.

 

[kinyonga]

I don't know how you would get to that percentage gut loading with fresh....I'm not a dietician and I don't know the calcium percentages in all the greens and veggies. I hope you can figure it out if that's the way you decide to go. AlI can tell you is that I kept/bred/raised chameleons for over 25 years and I gut loaded crickets, super worms, etc with a wide assortment of greens and veggies and a small amount of fruit. I dusted the insects with a phos. free calcium powder at most feedings and with a phos free calcium/D3 powder twice a month and a vitamin powder with a beta carotene source of vitamin A twice a month and used a Reptisun 5.0 UVB long linear light on the cages and ...for example...my veiled females almost always lived to be over 6 years old. (No MBD...no egg binding or follicular stasis. Almost all bodies were taken for necropsy.)