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2by2
at Fri Apr 21 23:02:28 2006 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by 2by2 ]
Wow....lots of posts to digest here. As far as growth goes. Here is my thoughts. I think veileds are ridiculously forgiving....It seems like nomatter what people do to them (or cats).... they just live....Its crazy how much these things can take. So my question is this. How fast do they grow in the wild?? Are they mature in 6-8 months?? Or does it take them a full 12 months or more?
In captivity it seems that we can pretty much do whatever seems to be working and they'll adapt to the situation. In every clutch of veileds that I've raised, I've always fed them once a day. I try to pretty much guess how many crickets they'd eat...and thats how many I throw in. I'd say 9 times out of ten by the next day there were no crickets left. My males would start head bobbing around seven or eight months and my females usually wouldn't start showing receptive coloring until 8 or 9 months. I dont think my clutches grew particularly fast compared to alot of veileds I see out there. But I wouldn't say that they were slow grown either. No chams from my personal breedings that I kept back for breeding purposes, or chams that I sold to people I know seemed to have any signs of MBD at all. At least from what I can tell. Not even Predator....and I could have sworn based on his extremely slow growth compared to the others that I'd at least see some signs.
So back to the point. I think our goal in captivity should be to replicate what happens in the wild as best we possibly can. Minus all the stress factors of course. So if they grow slow in the wild...thats probably what we want to do in captivity. And if the data represented shows that the animals are much healthier and sturdy when slow grown thats probably a good sign that we're on teh right track. But on the other hand, in the wild, they have access to as much food as they want. Right?? So are their growth rates fast??
This subject is very interesting now that I really start thinking about it. Ah.....if only chams could talk.....then they'd probably tell us we're all wrong! lol.
>>Veiled's growth rates vary even within a single clutch - runts excluded. Veileds will reach normal adult size regardless of their growth rate, as long as they are not fed so little that they become stunted, of course. It's just that they could be fed to grow so fast they mature in 5-6 months, or slowly enough that they aren't ready to breed until 12 months.
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>>I remember, years ago, the slogan was "baby to baby in 12 months". It's amazing how many wholesalers bred these things that quickly, and incubated them at high temperatures to hatch faster. They were literally hatching out, growing up fast, mated at 4-5 months of age, laying eggs, which were incubated close to 90 degrees, which woudl hatch out within a year from the parent's birthday!
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>>I'm happy having eggs hatch 20 months after a female is born!
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Noah @ 2by2
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RE: Cats and Chams dont mix - The Predat - 2by2, Fri Apr 21 23:02:28 2006