Questions from a complete novice..

[Cwhite]

Hi there!
I have recently been doing some research about chameleons as they seem like such interesting pets. Despite all the great information on this website and others, there are still a couple of questions I haven't found an answer to. I am currently in Vet school, so a few times a year I go home for a week or so. What do you guys do when you go on vacation? Are there any chameleons that can go without food for that long? And speaking of food, are there other possibilities besides crickets as a staple diet? It just seems like maybe some type of worm would be easier to deal with, but maybe not as nutricious?

Thanks everyone!
Christina

 

[Rickky]

If you go on vacation I would find someone who can give your chameleon food and water...I personally wouldnt recommend going that long without some source of food....crickets I think arethe best staple...You can gutload them with so many different essentials for your chameleon because they will eat almost anything...but variety is key to keeping a happy healthy chameleon

 

[Marc10edora]

My adult Veiled has gone 3 days without food before. When I leave for vacation, I set up my automated mister machine to provide water and have someone feed my cham when I am gone. I never leave for longer than a week. Especially if whoever I leave with my cham doesn't know much on their husbandry.

To make it easier on the chamsitter, I put my feeders in seperate cups with enough gutload to last them and they are dusted with supplents. I label each cup with a day and cover them up. When the chamsitter feeds them All they have to do is put the cup in the cage. Then the next day, exchange the cup. I make sure my cham is well fed and watered before I leave. I also make sure the cage is spotless, just in case the chamsitter gets too lazy to clean any hard to reach poop. Having the feeders in the cup also makes sure that the feeders don't eat any poop.

For a staple diet, I feed adults crickets, silkworms, and dubia roaches. I wouldn't feed too many silkworms because my last cham got spoiled on them and started to ignore the crickets. Silkworms are more fattening and they are easier to catch.

 

[panthercham]

My adult Veiled has gone 3 days without food before. When I leave for vacation, I set up my automated mister machine to provide water and have someone feed my cham when I am gone. I never leave for longer than a week. Especially if whoever I leave with my cham doesn't know much on their husbandry.

To make it easier on the chamsitter, I put my feeders in seperate cups with enough gutload to last them and they are dusted with supplents. I label each cup with a day and cover them up. When the chamsitter feeds them All they have to do is put the cup in the cage. Then the next day, exchange the cup. I make sure my cham is well fed and watered before I leave. I also make sure the cage is spotless, just in case the chamsitter gets too lazy to clean any hard to reach poop. Having the feeders in the cup also makes sure that the feeders don't eat any poop.

For a staple diet, I feed adults crickets, silkworms, and dubia roaches. I wouldn't feed too many silkworms because my last cham got spoiled on them and started to ignore the crickets. Silkworms are more fattening and they are easier to catch.

This is what I do to. The longest I have been away for is 10 days. The misting system, lighting and basking system is set up on a timer and the only thing my next door neighbor has to do is insert food cup every 2nd day, pick up any poop and make sure everything is all ok....in fact I think they like the break from our family as well as they get some peace and quiet

I feel ok doing this as my chams are now over a year old so they eat every 2nd day so there is not a lot for my neighbour to do but just make sure they are ok. If you have great friends, family or neighbours then you are set.

They are like children away at camp though....nothing stops you worrying about them though

 

[Cwhite]

Thanks a lot for the help!
OK, so it doesn't sound like it would be too much work for someone to come and feed when we are gone. It also sounds like crickets are the preferred feed of choice. How much would you say one would spend in a month on crickets for one veiled chameleon? Just out of curiousity so I can get some sort of a financial map planned out. How long do crickets 'keep'? Could I get away with only buying them once a month? I'm just totally inexperienced with all this stuff, good thing I have at least six months to do research!
Thanks everyone!

 

[Rickky]

I work at a fish and reptile store and we get boxes of 1000 crickets for 15.00 and they are 2/4 or 3/4 weeks and they usually last the month if you feed them and keep them clean

 

[Cwhite]

OK thanks Rickky that is good to know.
Are there any chameleons other than pygmy chameleons that can be kept all the time as a pair (male/female)...sorry for all the questions

 

[summoner12]

Marc10edora has a good method. I find a cham sitter to feed my chams. Last time I was away for 11 days I had a local cham keeper buddy take care of my chams. He did better than I do! LOL BUT if you have someone doing it that knows nothing, setting them up not to fail is the best way to do it. Marc10edora has good ideas for solving the chamsitter blues.

 

[Marc10edora]

One good investment I made on feeders was breeding Dubia roaches. They are a good staple food and they are easy to maintain. You will spend about $40-$50 on a starter colony and it will take a while to get enough to start feeding as a staple. (It took me about 1 year to turn 40 adult dubias into 300). But once you get them started, they keep popping out. When I get an excess amount I either sell them or trade them with the local pet stores.
But it took me a while to get over the thought of raising giant roaches. They still give me the creeps.

 

[summoner12]

One good investment I made on feeders was breeding Dubia roaches. They are a good staple food and they are easy to maintain. You will spend about $40-$50 on a starter colony and it will take a while to get enough to start feeding as a staple. (It took me about 1 year to turn 40 adult dubias into 300). But once you get them started, they keep popping out. When I get an excess amount I either sell them or trade them with the local pet stores.
But it took me a while to get over the thought of raising giant roaches. They still give me the creeps.

haha they are creepy! The sound, the way they move...

It seems like it took you a bit of time to get them going though... If you REALLY wanna jump start them you gotta feed them dog food and keep them warm and watered. Once you get the quantity up..... stop with the dog food and start gut loading. Or, you can keep some off to the side for food with some lead time before feeding and gutload those. You do not want to feed your cham dubia with a gutload of dog food, but it does help them to reproduce.

I might add though, Dubia aren't for all chams. You might find, as I did, that your chams don't like Dubia. The issue I have with dubia is that they don't move much when fed to a cham in a bowl. They aren't 'exciting' enough for the cham to go 'OH FOOD!'. They do run a lot at first when you drop them into a bowl but it doesn't always last long enough to interest some chams. Again... this isn't allll chams, just some, like mine LOL. I think my chams hold out for the Silk and horn worms...

 

[Screameleons]

Adult panther chameleons can go for a few days without food, however they should not go without water. A misting system will take care of the water. Just make sure that your chameleon is well-fed prior to leaving.

Another thing you can do is prepare some house flies. House flies take about 4 days to hatch once you take them out of the fridge. Before you leave, place some pupae in the enclosure.

I also strongly recommend that you have a family member or neighbor check-in on the chameleon. At the very least, they should check to make sure that the misting system is still operating properly, and the lighting is functioning. If they are up for it, have them place some crickets in the enclosure.

The above info applies only to sub-adult to adult chameleons. I do not recommend leaving your juvenile panther chameleon unsupervised for several days in a row.

Vince
Screameleons

 

[sttines]

Chameleons and vacations don't mix. I haven't had a real vacation in 10 years.

 

[JoshCrane1]

im working on a servo activated feeding door from the chams cages to feeder containers, so that every other day the servo door would open and let feeders in, if all works out well i could leave for a couple weeks and just monitor everything via webcams.

 

[BocaJan]

WOW Josh, what a great contraption.

 

[JoshCrane1]

WOW Josh, what a great contraption.

pretty simple and it will help a lot.

 

[Cwhite]

Thanks for the great advice everyone. I know that ideally I would never leave for more than a couple of days, unfortunately for someone who goes to college in the middle of nowhere, that isn't really an option. I pretty much have to go home at least twice a year during holidays and the like. Everyone has had great suggestions though, thank you!