Vitamin D3....

[Eric Adrignola]

You're using reptisun bulbs?

One of the reasons that I had been slow to trust reptisun bulbs is because of other experiences that I had witnessed. The situation involved several instances where people had veileds with MBD, despite using zoomed reptisun bulbs. I just thought they were junk.

After actual tests were done, I realized that th ebulbs weren't junk - it was other variables. one of them being poor vitamin supplementation. People were overdosing their chameleons with vitamin A, which can cause problems with th ebody's ability to absorb calcium. Perhaps the main reason wh I was seeing this was th eway they were raising the babies: breeders were growing them so quickly, that the poor little things could not avoid MBD, repcal, zoomed bulbs, or natural sunlight included!

Liddy Kammer spoke of veileds that were raised in the sun developing MBD. When I bought two females from Florida, exposed them to natural sunlight, and had them die from MBD (one died from it, the other died shortly after), I began to have more faith in UVB bulbs.

It's not that the bulbs don't perform, it's that there's pleny of other ways to screw up your chameleon!

 

[kinyonga]

Raising chameleons without UVB using D3 supplements...
http://www.chameleonnews.com/interviewfer.html
"Larry Talent at Oklahoma State University successfully raised multiple generations of panther chameleons by giving his animals carefully measured doses of vitamin D3 with no UVB and I have no doubt that other breeders have figured out effective doses with veiled and other chameleon species. Unfortunately, I do not recall the exact dose that Talent used and I haven't tried this approach extensively myself. Unless a novice has direct advice from an experienced breeder about the exact source and dose of vitamin D to use in the absence of UVB, I strongly recommend the use of one of the commercially available UVB-generating bulbs and low or no dietary vitamin D."

Bearded dragons...
http://www.reptilerooms.com/Sections+index-req-viewarticle-artid-55-page-1.html

 

[Dave Weldon]

You're using reptisun bulbs?

...several instances where people had veileds with MBD, despite using zoomed reptisun bulbs...

...it was other variables. one of them being poor vitamin supplementation. People were overdosing their chameleons with vitamin A, which can cause problems with the body's ability to absorb calcium. Perhaps the main reason why I was seeing this was the way they were raising the babies: breeders were growing them so quickly, that the poor little things could not avoid MBD, repcal, zoomed bulbs, or natural sunlight included!

Liddy Kammer spoke of veileds that were raised in the sun developing MBD. When I bought two females from Florida, exposed them to natural sunlight, and had them die from MBD (one died from it, the other died shortly after), I began to have more faith in UVB bulbs...

Howdy,

Another source of nutritional MBD-like symptoms that I have heard of from several sources including my vet is that some captive hatched chameleons can have some sort of malfunction that results in the same symptoms as Nutritional Metabolic Bone Disease but is actually caused by a birth defect that may affect the entire clutch and may even be hereditary meaning that future clutches will have the same result. While I think that this seems entirely plausable, I'll bet it is pretty rare compared to overfeeding etc. I think that hereditary birth defects is letting breeders off to easy . I'm much more inclined to line-up with Eric's comments about over-feeding/under-over-supplementing/under-lighting inducing actual Nutritional MBD.

 

[kinyonga]

Dave and Eric...do you know how these eggs were incubated?

 

[Dave Weldon]

Dave and Eric...do you know how these eggs were incubated?

Howdy,

No info to add which is partly why I'm skeptical about the story...

 

[Eric Adrignola]

Got a point there. In most cases where MBD is encountered despite UVB and supplementation, the breeders are "mass breeders". They have hundreds of veileds at a time, and unload them for a tiny amount. The key here is profit. I'm not against profit at all. But this is my hobby FIRST, a profit making quasi-businees possibility SECOND. I hold others in my hobby to a higher standard than I do other businesses as a result.

To them, they are in a situation where they HAVE to sell the animals as fast as possible. The longer the animals take to grow, the longer they are in their care - the longer the eggs take to hatch - the less money they make. That's the problem with hobbies as businesses. Some do it right, many don't. It gets to the point where it's not fun, it's NECESSARY - and you compromise quality, standards, and ethics...

Most breeders that overfeed babies in order to grow them quickly also, for the same reasons, incubate their eggs at high temps. I've been ridiculed by a local breeder for the size of my 2 mnth old veileds - theirs were 3x the size of mine. I knew, from earlier conversations with them, that they incubated just under 90 degrees. Their eggs hatched at 6 months, sometimes sooner. they were tiny, needing small drosophilia and true pinheads.

I had asked them how they raised their animals, as I had a female develop MBD - minor MBD, where she had a soft casque and jaws, but no permanant deformities. I had purchased two females from them, one subadult and the other juvinile. One died from an impaction that she had at purchase - the duodenum was calcified and hardended, and would not let anything past. The other dropped dead after a month in my care - her intestines were calcified and extremely narrow for her age, causing a blockage in the middle.

She fed them food constantly, and dusted everything with Rep-cal. I suspect their deaths were related to the massive amounts of calcium and D3. Their intestines were just not right.

I wonder if accelerated growth in the egg due to artificially high temps can lead to accelerated growth post-hatching.

Seems logical. I'm not going to test it though!

 

[kinyonga]

What I wanted to know was not the temperature of incubation but the method....was it done in a closet where the temperature was appropriate or were the eggs incubated in an incubator to attain the appropriate temperature?

 

[Eric Adrignola]

This person in question used an incubator, maintained constant temps throughout, and was adamant about weighing their containers, to ensure no moisture was lost. I guess that had ventilated containers.

I've always used a closet, or shelf, in a cool room.