Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Meet Predator.

Long story short (I believe I posted the whole story in a thread below).....he met the cats....and the cats won. But miraculously he's alive. He'll never be the stud breeder that he once had the potential for....but I'm not sure that he really cares to much about that.

Lesson: If your ever watching some kind of illegal "House Cat vs. 4 day old baby veiled" fight......bet big on the cat. lol. Oh....and dont let your cats in your cham room....ever.

-----
Noah @ 2by2

ugh thats terrible.

my cats seem to be more interested with the crickets. too bad your cats didn't find any crickets to pick on
-----
1.0 Veiled Chameleon -- Dexter
13 months old

4 days old - he looks older than that!

Who's to say that he'll never be a stud breeder - injuries and damage don't mean a thing. Look at the Kammer's #1 calyptratus - Flash Gordon. He sired some of the best looking veileds I've ever seen (including mine), and he was deformed from MBD.

Besides, I think he'll heal up such that you won't be able to tell he was hurt.

Tough little critters.

My cats usually ignored my chameleons - they liked the day geckos better.

A friend of mine in PA had a housecat, dog and 6' iguana free roaming in his house. his cat was awesome. He'd catch everything that escaped. Pete woudl come home, and his cat woudl be on the floor, with it's paw on top of a lizard. It'd sit and wait for him to come home. Never even scratched the things, depsite having claws.

The only bad incedent was when his big quad escaped, and the iguana mistook it for some greens. Chewed part of it's tail off and broke a horn.

Generally, cats are th eworst. They'll catch and kill anything. Probably the most effective predators. Interestingly, phelsuma seem to be good at evadign them. My parents have 6 cats - all with a good prey drive. My brother had a bunch of geckos free roaming in his room (cause he's a careless little turd), golden geckos, and Standing's day geckos. They were all reproducing in the room in the summer. We'd find dead golden geckos outside the room every once in a while. They'd escape, and get killed. the phelsuma, on the other hand, escaped more often, but never was one caught - despite being active at night much of the time.

They are smart suckers.

He's actually 8 months old now. He was 4 days old when the accident occured. As far as him being a stud someday. Hey, I'd love for him to grow up big and strong.
But the reality is...he's much smaller than his brothers and sisters, and it seems that his vitamin/mineral needs are much more than a normal veileds. He has problems with his eyes ocasionally, and sometimes his shed just doesn't want to come off is some areas. These are problems I've seen in some different Montanes that I used to keep (Quads, Deremensis, Mt. Meru Jacksons). I always seemed to eventually run into problems with those guys. Although most of them were WC and that was probably alot of the problem. I think theres probably someting that I was missing in their gutload or supplementation schedule that was also a problem
Now back to Predators problems. They seem to be getting much better with age. You can tell in the pics that he's no longer having any issues with shedding.....and he hasn't had any eye issues in a couple months now. He's also recently been going through some pretty good growth spurts.....So I guess its entirely possible that he will turn out just like he's supposed to......minus half a face anyway. lol. I guess we'll just have to see.

This is his dad.
>>4 days old - he looks older than that!
>>
>>Who's to say that he'll never be a stud breeder - injuries and damage don't mean a thing. Look at the Kammer's #1 calyptratus - Flash Gordon. He sired some of the best looking veileds I've ever seen (including mine), and he was deformed from MBD.
>>
>>Besides, I think he'll heal up such that you won't be able to tell he was hurt.
>>
>>Tough little critters.
>>
>>My cats usually ignored my chameleons - they liked the day geckos better.
>>
>>A friend of mine in PA had a housecat, dog and 6' iguana free roaming in his house. his cat was awesome. He'd catch everything that escaped. Pete woudl come home, and his cat woudl be on the floor, with it's paw on top of a lizard. It'd sit and wait for him to come home. Never even scratched the things, depsite having claws.
>>
>>The only bad incedent was when his big quad escaped, and the iguana mistook it for some greens. Chewed part of it's tail off and broke a horn.
>>
>>Generally, cats are th eworst. They'll catch and kill anything. Probably the most effective predators. Interestingly, phelsuma seem to be good at evadign them. My parents have 6 cats - all with a good prey drive. My brother had a bunch of geckos free roaming in his room (cause he's a careless little turd), golden geckos, and Standing's day geckos. They were all reproducing in the room in the summer. We'd find dead golden geckos outside the room every once in a while. They'd escape, and get killed. the phelsuma, on the other hand, escaped more often, but never was one caught - despite being active at night much of the time.
>>
>>They are smart suckers.

-----
Noah @ 2by2

Yeah - I noticed that in the other forum.

He's not too small. I bet he grows up just fine. He's probably not
stunted. Veileds growth rate can vary so much, depending on food and
other factors, that's entirely possible he will be as big as his dad by his
2nd birthday - it can take that long.

I always grew my veileds slow. I remember, selling a few to a couple in
NJ, when the animals were 2 months old. I saw them later, a few
months later, and their female was twice the size of my other females
the same age! At about 12 months, they were all the same size, but
hers was on her second clutch, whereas my females were JUST
mating. Unless there is a severe trauma, and a long periopd of
starvation, they dont' "stunt" very readily.

My second clutch of veileds suffered from a food supply problem -
rainbow mealwormss staff was incompetant. They measured pinheads
by a thimble-sized cup. 1000 pinheads fill a cup. I bought 1000
pinheads from them, and what I got was about 50 crickets, just under
1/4 inch. Their "pinheads" were a bit on the "big" size - yet the idiot
packing them still used the pinhead measuring cup! I had to feed them
fruit flies (and I had barely any of them) for a week, before I got
pinheads in. Most only got 1 or 2 flies, every other day. Another time,
a month later, I had to get 2 replacement orders of pinheads, as they
kept coming in dead from another place. My veileds, only 1.5 months
old at the time, had been through 2 periods of time when they ate
practically nothing for a week. I had two or three runts die, btu all the
others survived. Not only were they NOT stunted, they all grew larger
than the father (a small, WC male) It just took them a bit longer to get
that big!

Even the babies are tough.

Eric, I'm glad to read that. So, even if Valentino doesn't look so gorgeous, he can still grow to be a normal sized male (or close to it?). some more positive information in his rehab. Thank you, Diane
-----

dianedfisher@yahoo.com

My 3 CWD-Avanyu, Tripod and Drago
Valentino, Veiled Chameleon
Chyam, Nosy Be Panther Chameleon

Poor guy. Hey- he toughed it out now and is lookin' great. I'm not the biggest fan of cats- Have 'feline phobia' (LOL) My old neighbor had 27 in his house, and I had lost countless reptiles due to the cats finding away to claw into their outdoor enclosures...It's pretty hard to cat-proof them.

The growth rates of Veiled chameleons are astonishing. It's amazing how each individual Veiled varies, sometimes months apart before they catch up to one another.

Michele

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.

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!

I'm happy having eggs hatch 20 months after a female is born!

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.
>>
>>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!
>>
>>I'm happy having eggs hatch 20 months after a female is born!
-----
Noah @ 2by2

That's exactly how I feed mine, once a day, as much as they eat. Sometimes, they get a little less, twice a day. I always try to jst feed them enough so there is no food left an hour later.

Many breeder I know feed them constantly - literally, there are always feeders in with babies. As much as they can eat in the morning, late morning, noon, early afternoon, late afternoon, evening, nighttime....

I've had some females, that I purchased from these breeders, poop 4 times in one day when I first got them home!