poss egg bound veiled please help.

[charles]

Hello all,
I have 18 month old female veiled chameleon. She has never been bred, or ever exhibited signs of wanting to lay, but she looks fat. I am scared of egg binding. What should I look for with reguards to egg binding. Based on what others have posted she sholud have layed her first infertile clutch by now. She is eating and drinking normally. She eats about six to eight insects aday, which are given in variety, and drinks at each misting.i have tried to feel her abdomen to see if any eggs can be felt but I can feel none.She is deficateing normally with plenty of white color in her urates. I am a worry wart when it comes to my chameleon, and any and all help would be greatly welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Charles

 

[Brad Ramsey]

Have you provided her with a suitable place to lay eggs if she needs to?
Kinyonga I believe would be a good person to respond to this thread, she has great success in controlling the behavior of female veileds.

-Brad

 

[Will Hayward]

This Thread, will be a good read for you.

Based on what others have posted she sholud have layed her first infertile clutch by now.

By the way, Female Veileds don't NEED to produce eggs. Overfeeding is what triggers infertile egg production and a properly monitored diet will be able to keep them strong and healthy, while not signaling their bodies into egg production mode.

 

[charles]

yes she does have a place to lay her eggs if need be. Honestly guys she hasn't exhibited any signs of being ready to lay like my panthe does when she has layed in the past. is there a chance that she could be just obese.

 

[Will Hayward]

Post some photos of the setup, the chameleon, and etc.

 

[charles]

the pic in my profile was taken today

 

[kinyonga]

I have several veiled females right now that are over 3 years of age and have never laid a single egg. I haven't had any eggbinding problems for many years either. What I do is control their diet...and the cage temperature to some degree.

The idea is to prevent her from producing egg follicles by keeping her fed enough that she isn't starving but that she isn't overfed either. If you look at my females they are not skinny by any means. Controlling the diet also seems to keep the size of the clutches down when the female does lay eggs. Mine always lay about 20 to 25 eggs per clutch.

I do this "diet control" until I want the female to produce eggs. Once the female has been mated, and I know she is working on a batch of eggs, I start to feed her well and put the temperatures up the couple of degrees that I had lowered them. (The intention of the cooler temperature was to slow her metabolism down a little so she wouldn't be as hungry.) Once the female lays the eggs, I continue to feed her well for a few days so that she can recover from the egglaying and then I put her back on her diet.

BTW, I don't mate my females often...just to keep their lines going.

Most of my females live to be over 6 years of age keeping them the way I do.
I have close to 100% hatch rate and at the end of 2 months, more than 95% of the babies are still alive.

Concerning egg binding...IMHO, the 3 biggest reasons that a female becomes eggbound are failure to provide a suitable egglaying site, letting the female see you watching her every time she is digging and poor husbandry. Eggbinding can also be caused by improperly formed/fused eggs, reproductive system problems, eggs growing too large before the female can lay them, etc.

Indications of eggbinding can include but are not limited to...sitting around on the bottom of the cage, digging a hole and filling it in without laying the eggs, digging for several days and then not digging any more, not eating (which a female will often do as egglaying time approaches anyhow), not looking well. Once the signs are clear, there is usually little time to get her to the vets.

If you are concerned about eggbinding and xray should confirm whether she is growing eggs or not.

Hopefully there is no problem with your chameleon!