Uh oh...

[voxxom]

So i was cleaning both of my chams cages at the same time, i thought it would help save a bit of time doing them together..

so i took out my male and set him in a plant in my room, and my female in another plant in my bathroom..

i began cleaning the cages and about halfway through, i went to check the chams (i had a tupaware container under the plants, so if the decided to bail fromt he plant and roam around, they would be stuck in the storage container)

yet somehow my male managed to evade the plastic storage container, make a run down the hallway, into my room.. and guess who he went to visit!

so, panicking, i walked into my room to see if the female was there.. and she was.. with him right on top of her doing the dirty..

they both gave me looks like "what are you looking at?"

it was funny too see their reactions to my discovery..

theyre about 5 1/2 months old each and pretty darn healthy

i didnt want to break it up, cause its a natural thing occuring and i cant just rip them apart.

so after they were done.. they parted and i took the cages back to them and returned them accordingly.

so now im pretty sure she is pregnant, and she its retaining an almost black color with lots of turquoise and yellow stripes and spots all over.

and any time she sees him, she just hisses and gets really mad.

the colors worry me though.. is it normal for her to be black/yellow/turquoise after mating?

sorry that this is isnt being posted in the breeding section, but i need a responce rather quickly

 

[scooter4n]

Nice going , LOL, what was good.

 

[Will Hayward]

What a useful response...


Ok, Hello Matt. Yes the colours do mean she is gravid, they are normal colours for a females in her gestation and layig period. In the wild its been found that females become mature enough for mating quite fast, howeverr the consequences seemed to be (in my experience with wild caught females) that they do not acheive as great a size in general as captive bred and born specimens that are mated after 12+ months.

I suppose this halt in growth would be caused by the draw of nutrients and calcium from the mothers body as she is forming the eggs. Keep extra care to provide all nessescities to your young lady to make this early birth go over smoothly.

I beleive there are a few Breeders that use the 6 in 6 method aswell. The eggs incubate months and hatch in six months and the feales are mated in their six month. They may be able to give you some better info on how to care for young females laying.

 

[Jordan]

I do not know why this story reminds me of being young again. The youth, the innocences, the boundaries and the walk in.

For future referance chameleons can jump. Sometimes they may even opt to fall to the ground and then go about their way.

Are you going to try to keep the eggs and hatch them?

 

[Scrappy]

LMAO....maybe she got dark and hissed at him because it was not an enjoyable experience Sorry, just kidding! Guess they both had other things on their mind besides hanging out on a plant waiting for you to return....LOL FREEDOM!

 

[kinyonga]

How close is she to being fullgrown size?

The main drawbacks I can see in this are that if she hasn't finished growing she still needs calcium and other nutrients to complete her own growth that she will now have to put into the eggs and if she isn't fullgrown and the eggs forming inside her reach full normal size that they may be difficult for her to lay. I hope that her clutch size will be small!

Feed her a nutritious diet of gutloaded and properly supplemented insects and hopefully all will go well.

The bright spots and dark background colors are a warning to the male to stay away, that she is already gravid/non-receptive and doesn't need/want to mate. If you put them together when the female is showing the dark background colors and hissing and gaping (even after she has laid the eggs), she will likely lunge at the male and bite if he comes close enough...and at the very least, you are causing stress to her by showing her to him when she's gravid/non-receptive.

Do you have a suitable egglaying container in her cage? You should, IMHO so that you don't miss the signs of her getting ready to lay the eggs.

Also...when she's digging, don't let her see you watching her or she may abandon the hole feeling its unsafe.

Good luck!

 

[Will Hayward]

The main drawbacks I can see in this are that if she hasn't finished growing she still needs calcium and other nutrients to complete her own growth that she will now have to put into the eggs and if she isn't full grown and the eggs forming inside her reach full normal size that they may be difficult for her to lay. I hope that her clutch size will be small!

I have always kept my f.pardalis clutches to about 20-25 eggs. Lynda has helped with this by suggesting on how the diet controls the eggs development. This was almost a year ago and I have had good luck since.

You should decrease food substantially in the first ~week after her mating- this will should determine how many eggs are created. Afterwards you can increase food a bit to insure that those eggs are healthy and have the necessary nutrients. All the while, supplementing with Vitamins, Calcium and you can opt to use some liquid calcium as well.

Hopefully Lynda will have more to reply with.

When did the mating take place?

 

[kinyonga]

Regarding the diet of females...the following has worked for me...for the first few (two or three) days after the female lays her eggs, I feed her very well. I then cut her back and keep her cut back (not to the point of starvation though) until I am sure she is producing her next batch of eggs (so the number of eggs is set)...and then I feed her well again until she lays the eggs. My veileds and panthers lay clutches in the range of 20 to 25 eggs by doing this. The offspring are healthy and live long lives, generally. I also keep my veiled females slightly cooler than the males. I think it slows their metabolism slightly.

Using this method for panthers, I have found I cannot stop the egg production...they still produce eggs on regular schedule even if not mated. However, the veileds I have that I've raised from hatchlings do not produce a single egg when not mated using this method. I have two veiled females right now that are five years old and have never laid a single egg. I have also mated ones that were over three old that went on to produce good eggs and healthy hatchlings.

Most of the veiled females that I have hatched and raised live to be over 6 years old and the males live even longer.

 

[VanCham]

so wait, how do you raise female veiled's without them producing eggs? feed them well but keep the temp a little lower?

 

[kinyonga]

I don't often make this public because its hard to explain and I would hate for someone to try it and have problems with their chameleon as a result and be mad at me for telling them how to do it...so the onus is on you if you try. I would not recommend you try it if you have had little experience with chameleons...it took me quite a while to get everything in balance so it works right. All I can say is it works with veileds for me. (Panthers don't stop producing eggs though.)

I grow my veiled hatchlings slower than most people seem to in the first place. I keep them in cages with a double florescent fixture over them...one tube is a normal white light florescent and the other is a repti-sun 5.0 (ususally...the odd time they will be out of stock and I run out so I have to substitute). I have no basking light unless the temperatures in the cage drop too much but the tube lights are very close to the cage lids so they can sit close to them to warm up to some degree.

Until they are about 5 months of age, I feed them daily as much as they can eat in a couple of minutes and leave a couple of crickets free in the cages. I say about because it depends on how big the chameleon is more than the age.) I then start to cut back and feed them every second day. In the cooler months I feed them every third day.

With the gutloading and supplementation and the fact that they don't have a real basking light (they can get close to the UVB bulb as I already mentioned, and their cage temperature is still in the 80's), they don't produce any eggs.

I don't breed my females often because I'm more interested in having them with me for a longer period of time than I am in making them reproduce...but I also don't want my lines to die off.

I have two veiled females now that are over 5 that have never laid an egg. I have one female Latefah, who is about 3 and has never laid an egg. Her mother was gravid with her when she was at least 4....and may have had one clutch before the one Latefah hatched from.