Too breed or not to breed

[Alan12013]

My question is actually about colorations and health. I am considering breeding my male ({The Dude}when I get him 100% healthy) with my female (Maud) when she is old enough and ready. I don't know any history or lineage of either animals. The male looks like what I've found being sold online as a "premium" veiled. The female my mother got for me at petsmart. She looks more teal than most other baby female veilds I've seen and when she gets cranky she really turns some darker colors. I attached a couple pictures of her but I cant get the pictures of The Dude to load right now. You can see pictures of him under my thread in the health forum titled "new veiled loaded with issues". His colors have stabled out a lot since I've got him though. Not sure why (assuming it's because he is healthier and happier) but he used to show a lot more yellows and orange spots, now after this shed I am seeing some deep green with bland yellow and light teal. 1)I would like to know what you can predict about the outcome and looks of future babies based on the parents. Would all the babies grow up to look similar or is there a chance for a couple variations? 2) I am assuming my girl is only 6-7 months old so I will wait until she is over a year. I was told he is a little over a year old. Does age difference matter? If hardiness can be passed on then I would say my male has solid genetics, the previous owners didn't take care of him at all and treated him as if he were a leopard gecko or other desert lizard.

I've been wanting to try breeding chameleons to give me something to do and I love them. I think that going through the process and seeing the little hatchlings grow up and taking care of them would be awesome! My idea is that I would build cages for them that are suitable for long term and sell them or give them to people I know would be able to take care of them, keeping at least a few for myself and my daughter. I own a café and have a lot of regular customers that have told me they would love to buy a chameleon from me if I decided to breed them.

 

[jannb]

Here's an older thread from 2007 about breeding. Even though it's older it contains some excellent information. https://www.chameleonforums.com/some-thoughts-breeding-2612/

From my personally experience I'd say have a very nice saving account because baby veileds are very expensive to raise. Not only do you have to have the lights and baby bins they eat a ton. My little guys are eating 2000 crickets a week right now and I only have 10. I feed them a variety so not only am I buying crickets, I have baby Hornworns, baby superworms, fruit flies and Phoenix worms. The very hardest part about having baby veileds is you get really attached to them because they are so cute and so sweet and show so much personality and then it's really hard to find good homes for them especially the females.

 

[junglefries]

Female should be 14 months old before breeding. No more than 4-6 clutches should be produced. I retire my ladies after 4. The calcium stripping is too much, especially for such a big active cham. If you breed, try and get her outdoors every second you can. Mine live outside from may-oct. As far as colors, do you shoot dice? Then you get the idea. Colors are predominantly influenced by the male, but mother nature has a since of humor also. Careful what you wish for with the babies. They eat lke teenage boys, who smoke a lot of.....

 

[Olimpia]

You have several months until your male and female are ready (I actually think she's younger, since she's small and doesn't have her mature coloring yet, so 5ish months at most) so you can keep thinking about it.

Your male is very handsome, but something to consider is that veileds are bred all the time so finding homes for all of them, especially the girls, may be tougher than it seems. So I would follow this blog (http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.com/2007/12/keeping-female-veiled.html) to a T, to keep her egg production as low as possible. Raising and rehoming 10-20 babies is significantly cheaper and easier than raising and rehoming 40-50.

Another thing to consider is that food is expensive, so breeding your own feeders makes all the difference. I raised two clutches of panthers, both about 10 babies each, and between breeding fruit flies, crickets, and 3-4 species of roaches I spent very little feeding them (I spent under $50 to buy in food during their first 3 months.) So I would put together colonies of things even before you breed your pair, especially stuff like roaches that take a bit to get going. Look into tiny species, like green banana roaches for the first few weeks and then stuff like dubias/discoids for when they're larger, for example.

And then you have to be prepared to house a few of the babies for longer in case they don't all go immediately. So you'll want to have cages ready to hold on to several individual babies if you have to. Unfortunately it's the girls that take a while to find good homes for usually.

Also, genetics are still always 50-50, so even if your male looks a certain way the female's genetics will account for half of what the offspring look like. It's highly unlikely that 100% of the babies look like their father, so you can definitely expect variation.

 

[Iluvheidi]

From my personally experience I'd say have a very nice saving account because baby veileds are very expensive to raise. Not only do you have to have the lights and baby bins they eat a ton. My little guys are eating 2000 crickets a week right now and I only have 10. I feed them a variety so not only am I buying crickets, I have baby Hornworns, baby superworms, fruit flies and Phoenix worms. The very hardest part about having baby veileds is you get really attached to them because they are so cute and so sweet and show so much personality and then it's really hard to find good homes for them especially the females. [/QUOTE]

WOW JAN! Ive never broke it down like that but you are right. My babies are gonna kill my wallet. Luckly I have money saved up for such an event. All the sudden 72 eggs in my closet are scarying me lol. Thank you for the humbling moment. my Sulley and Millie so far made two clutches the second one was retained no mating was done and they are both doing well. the first clutch (48) was about two months before the second (24) This will be the only clutch from sulley and millie =)

 

[Alan12013]

Thank you guys! Good info junglefries, thanks! I have researched this a lot and time and money isn't an issue. I am already a business owner but have always had a passion for pets and more so for leopard geckos and recently chameleons. I want to thoroughly do my home work then dive in. I also want to stress that I look at it as a life choice at the moment and not much more. I have spent so much money on my male chameleon already at the vets office that selling his offspring wouldn't cover it. I'm also looking at another female that's been for sale on craigslist for a couple months (can you say no market for female veilds...). The female is over a year old and has a swollen eye. The owners tell me that it's a UVB irritation and not an infection and that they have drops... I most likely will buy her for as low as I can but I anticipate paying a good amount to get her taken care of at the vets, the way I see it is I am saving her instead of buying from a petstore. The reason I asked about the colors (an no I don't really like to roll the dice unless I'm just going for odds) is because my current female has a ton of teal and the way I see it in my mind is that her babies would look more solid teal and green and have less of my males variety of colors that he has compared to a lot of other males I've seen. The new female I want to buy has an unusual amount of yellow on her so I am wondering if she'd pop out some little ones that would look like my guy but with more yellow. Perhaps experience is the only way I'll learn for myself what if any characteristics are passed down from veild to veild. From what I've found online this is the idea for breeding them: a dashing male and a dashing female makes dashing offspring.

I would love to one day breed panthers but for now I feel like I should leave that to the people who've been doing it for years and are working with already established bloodlines. I've met with 2 local breeders that are having great success in breeding them and "epic chameleons" has been very helpful in talking to me and offering help to me if I ever decided to buy. He has a really friendly and nice looking male ambilobe named Nacho that recently had some kids. Got sidetracked (it's late)...

So I guess what I'm asking for advice on now is if you guys think it's a waste of time to think that this new yellow female will pass any yellow to her offspring or that my almost glow in the dark teal female would pass any of that on. As oppose to just a normal looking female. Thanks again guys!

 

[Alan12013]

You kind of already answered my question regarding genetics Olimpia so thank you. From what your post says I am assuming that without seeing the females parents I could assume that their coloration should in some way be passed down. I know it seems pretty miniscule to breed for coloration in a veild since most people that want color turn to panthers but I like the veilds a lot and it's what I started with. I also wanted to state that I am currently breeding crickets. I have another week for them to hatch to prove I am doing it right but I have seen the females laying the eggs in my bins that I put in there and I have several batches going so I do think it will turn out. I also just found a great source for little plastic tubs that are similar to those old film canisters that I plan on using for roach breeding. My father goes through water flavorings ever 2 days and each time he tosses out the plastic housing for them so now I will use them for the breeding. I had already read that article on reducing egg production but thank you very much for bringing that up! I plan on following that as close as I can especially the first time around! To address the other thing you brought up... I have a large cage that is only for use outside and I will take my chams out to hang out in the sun during the day if I'm home, it has places for them to hide too. More often then not though I feel bad for disturbing him but I will just sit outside in the sun for about an hour or two reading with my male chameleon just sitting on my arm or leg. Taking the females out while breeding will not be an issue and I can provide that for them at least for 2 hours a day no problem. Although sunlight in Portland Oregon is a rare sight. I've been acquiring various cages lately so I don't think that housing them for a long time would be an issue, getting attached to them would be!

As far as a market. It seems to me like most people that breed sell to other breeders?? This is especially evident in the Leopard gecko world. Every chameleon I see on craigslist stays there for a long time, they're usually females 100-250 dollars with the cage (I assume female because from what I've seen in Oregon petsmart is the only large store that carries chams and they're an all female store). Do you think that there is a market for selling baby veilds for maybe 30-50 each without the cage? Is the rumor true about a certain large online reptile store that will buy all baby veilds for 10 dollars?

I know it's a pipe dream but breeding and taking care of reptiles for a living sounds perfect to me. Sorry again for being so long winded.