Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi there, I purchased a veiled chameleon a few months back and I took him to the vet today and I was informed that he has MBD. After a series of questions on how I took care of Yoshi she told me that he probably got it from the pet store I purchased home from (she told me I was providing him proper care). I have been calcium powdering his crickets (accept for the past couple of weeks because I thought he had calcium deposits) and I have also been gut loading them. Yoshi was given a calcium shot and a vitamin... D3 shot I want to say and I was given some Calcium Gluconate for me to feed to him orally daily. He has been eating very lightly lately but still remains very active so this is the question I want to ask: How often to chameleons live through MBD?

Providing the MBD isn't in a very advanced state, I think the changes are very good your chameleon will live. Make sure he does get regular dusted insects with calcium with DS, exposure to UVB rays either from an appropriate bulb or natural unfiltered sunlight, and all his other husbandry needs are met.

You didn't describe how severe the MBD was when you took your Cham to the vet, so hard to give an acurate assumption on how well he will do with proper treatments and care. If he has severe bone deformations, these are most likely not to recover, so misaligned jaw etc, may always be present in the lizard. If he wasn't so far as to show bone deformities, then his chances are much better to pull through.

Best thing to do is administer the oral stuff the vet gave you and keep the cham as stress free as possible. Bring him back to the vet for a follow up in a couple months or if the cham shows any signs of getting worse.

He has a permenant deformed left arm and as for the severity of it he doesn't stand up but he climbs around allright. He is pretty active but is not eating (so I am force feeding him). I am feeding the crickets with basic flukers gut load and I am couting the cubes with flukers calcium food now so that should help. When I force feed Yoshi the crickets I completley cover them in calcium powder and I make sure he doesn't spit them out. he as a uvb lamp over him which we are going to lower so it is very close to him (inches). He also gets natural sunlight through a window for 2-3 hours a day (yes i do open the window).

MBD is generally an imbalance...the three main players in the imbalance are vitamin D3, calcium and vitamin A. I feel that temperature also plays a part in it because if the temperatures aren't correct the chameleon won't likely be able to use the nutrients you give it.

You have to be careful with vitamin D3 and preformed vitamin A because the are stored in the body and can be easily overdosed. (Vitamin A from beta carotene sources cannot be overdosed.)

Here's a site that have good information about it... chameleons...http://www.chameleonjournals.com/vet/

Here are two more sites with good information that you might find helpful....
http://adcham.com/
http://www.chameleonnews.com/index.html

I have taken care of several chameleons that have had MBD and because the damage was not severe, they lived to well within the normal range. They have less chance if their has been damage to the organs because of the MBD.

Hope you can get your chameleon back into good health!