Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a young female veiled chameleon. She apparently ingests small rocks that are in her cage with the bamboo plant. I have noticed her behaviour several times where she sits and plinks at the rocks...some are too big so they drop on the cage bottom. My bearded dragon also takes in rocks and poops them out. Is this normal behaviour and should this be stopped? She has pooped out the small rock and is as pissy as ever. Any ideas?

You should take the small rocks out of her enclosure as they pose a risk of impaction which can lead to serious health issues. If you have to leave in the rocks, but some sort of screen or covering over them so that your cham can not swallow them.
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0.1 Veiled Chameleon (Lola)
0.1 Leopard Gecko (Cleo)
1.0 Great Dane (Hercules)

I have a panther cham that will eat anything, including sticks and gravel. It's not a good thing, as they can get stuck in their guts and hurt their teethmouths. Her climbing branches are now all fake or too thick for her to break off and the nesting sand-box is put in at the last minutes removed promptly when she is done laying. She's not underfed, she is quite fat and vet agrees possibly a little over fed. Its possible that she mistook the small branchestwigs for walking stick instects (which she loves to eat) and the gravelsand for wood sows (aka pill bugs) which she also loves to eat. On the other hand, she also shot her tongue at my eye once (and nearly pulled the eyelid right off my face) so maybe she's got an eating disorder. Anyhow, you might want to put large pebbles on top of the gravel or a screen.
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Sandra
BC Canada

Chams are not rocket scientists...sometimes they are attracted by a shiny surface or color (like a freshly sprayed rock) and shoot at it to see whether it is edible or not. I had a veiled who spent a lot of time pacing my carpet shooting at shiny sand grains. Using rocks to cover pot soil is fine...just use larger ones that she can't pick up if you don't want to put pieces of screen over them.