Surprise Babies

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xxflowersxx

New Member
Hi, my name is Debbie. I am posting this for my mother-in-law. She has 3 panther chameleons. She had an accidental mating incident which resulted in 2 clutches of eggs. I'm not too familiar with chameleons however I offered to help her out with the eggs & resulting babies. I have tortoises and spend a lot of my free time reading about them so I know a little bit about the incubation process. She went out & bought some books and read what she could find. We've had the eggs in the incubator since january(1st clutch) and march (2nd clutch). At one point the incubator got unplugged by one of her younger kids by mistake. The temp dropped pretty low so we assumed the eggs just weren't gonna make it. We decided to leave the incubator on just in case though.
So after we lost all hope & thought the eggs were dead, we found a baby in the incubator tonight. We're not sure which clutch he came from or which egg. Somehow the little guy made it to the bottom of the incubator. We could use some help on what to do with the baby now. We put him in a container with a moist paper towel and left him in the incubator. He was moving around and seemed healthy. I guess I'm just looking for any advice anyone can give. I'm not even sure if we did the right thing tonight with him.

Please help. Thanks in advance
 
Put him in a large storage container for a quick set up for them with branches and things. Post some photos
 
You can set it up in a 10 gallon tank with a screen lid for now. You will need a UVB light over the cage and if that doesn't make the temperature in the cage in the low 80's you may have to add (at one end of the cage) an incandescent household light in a domed hood of a wattage that will provide this temperature range.

Branches of an appropriate size for its feet to grip would be needed in the cage and some greenery so the chameleon has some place to hide and get away from the light.

The chameleon can be fed gutloaded/well-fed pinhead crickets and fruitflies to start off with. They should be dusted with a phos.-free calcium powder at most feedings since most of the insects used to feed them have a poor ratio of calcium to phos.

The insects can also be dusted twice a month with a phos.-free calcium/D3 powder and twice a month with a vitamin powder. See below for more information.

Appropriate cage temperatures aid in digestion and thus play a part indirectly in nutrient absorption.

Exposure to UVB from either direct sunlight or a proper UVB light allows the chameleon to produce D3 so that it can use the calcium in its system to make/keep the bones strong and be used in other systems in the chameleon as well. The UVB should not pass through glass or plastic no matter whether its from the sun or the UVB light. The most often recommended UVB light is the long linear fluorescent Repti-sun 5.0 tube light. Some of the compacts, spirals and tube lights have caused health issues, but so far there have been no bad reports against this one.

A wide variety of insects that have been well fed and gutloaded should be fed to it.

Since many of the feeder insects we use in captivity have a poor ratio of calcium to phosphorus in them, its important to dust the insects just before you feed them to the chameleon at most feedings with a phos.-free calcium powder to help make up for it. (I use Rep-cal phosphorus-free calcium). Not sure how to tell you to dust WC insects if that is what you will be doing.

If you also dust twice a month with a phos.-free calcium/D3 powder it will ensure that your chameleon gets some D3 without overdoing it. It leaves the chameleon to produce the rest of what it needs through its exposure to the UVB light. D3 from supplements can build up in the system but D3 produced from exposure to UVB shouldn't as long as the chameleon can move in and out of it. (I use Rep-cal phos.-free calcium/D3).

Dusting twice a month as well with a vitamin powder that contains a beta carotene (prOformed) source of vitamin A will ensure that the chameleon gets some vitamins without the danger of overdosing the vitamin A. PrEformed sources of vitamin A can build up in the system and may prevent the D3 from doing its job and push the chameleon towards MBD. However, there is controversy as to whether all/any chameleons can convert the beta carotene and so some people give some prEformed vitamin A once in a while. (I use herptivite which has beta carotene.)

Gutloading/feeding the insects well helps to provide what the chameleon needs. I gutload crickets, roaches, locusts, superworms, etc. with an assortment of greens (dandelions, kale, collards, endive, escarole, mustard greens, etc.) and veggies (carrots, squash, sweet potato, sweet red pepper, zucchini, etc.)

Calcium, phos., D3 and vitamin A are important players in bone health and other systems in the chameleon (muscles, etc.) and they need to be in balance. When trying to balance them, you need to look at the supplements, what you feed the insects and what you feed the chameleon.

Here are some good sites for you to read too...
http://chameleonnews.com/07FebWheelock.html
http://web.archive.org/web/200605020...Vitamin.A.html
http://web.archive.org/web/200406080...d.Calcium.html
http://www.uvguide.co.uk/
http://web.archive.org/web/200601140...ww.adcham.com/
If you can't access the sites above that have the word "archive" in you can do it through the WayBackMachine.

Good luck!
 
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The accidental mating happened when she was cleaning out the females cage. I guess she wasn't thinking and put her in with the male for a minute and when she went to take her out, she said they were mating.

So as soon as they hatch should we take them out of the incubator and put them in their enclosure?

I know with tortoises you're supposed to leave them in the incubator for the first couple of days until they absorb the yolk sac. Is this the same with chameleons?

She has two extra screened in enclosures. Should we use those or use a glass tank? I know its harder to maintain heat in a screened enclosure. I have two extra 10gal from when my bearded dragons were small that I can give her if those are better.

Oh, and the parents are ambilobe panther chameleons. I'll post a pic of the male. I'll get a pic of the female and all of their setups and post them later. I also took a pic of the baby but I can't find my cord to upload it so I'll do that later too.

I'm going over there now to see if any more babies hatched last night.

Thank you to everyone that posted a reply. Your information is very helpful! I know that 9 times out of 10 you can get more information on these kinds of forums rather than trying to read it out of a book.
 

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No i think it would be fine to put them in the other screen enclosure as long if they arent huge if so just use a tank.
 
If there was one baby then others will probably be following soon, so make sure to have her keep checking on that, and tell her to make sure she has a ready supply of fruit flies and pinhead crickets too, cause the babies are gonna be hungry. Tell her congrats and good luck, be sure to post pics of the babies when you can.
 
Oops! Laurie drew this to my attention. In my post above I said that they only needed to be fed every two or three days...that's wrong...and I deleted it. They should be fed at least once a day and even twice is okay. (Sorry for that...I cut and pasted it and missed that comment when I checked it to make sure it was okay.)

Thanks Laurie for catching that!!!!
 
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Sorry I haven't posted in a couple days, I had a busy weekend. You guys were right, we are now up to four babies with three more eggs about to hatch any minute now. They are in a screen enclosure with a bunch of vines/leaves that are small enough for their little hands. I was actually able to take video of one of the babies coming out of his egg. I'm going to attach some pictures of the little guys. I didn't know that they come out black and then turn to white in a couple hours. They're soooooo cute!!!

I'm going to try to upload the video to youtube and i'll post a link to it later.

oh, sorry about the bad quality of the pics, they're all from my cell phone.
 

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