Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have a baby veiled .. and the guy whom i bought him from only about a month ago told me to keep him on pinheads for as long as possible... but from day one .. he doesnt even see the little things.. so ive had to go purchase petco's Small crickets until i made another cricket shipment
several nights ago i attemped to feed him a decent sized moth from my flower bed ( pesticide free.. and we sorta live far enough from everyone to not have a big pesticide problem) but anyways he ate not only that moth but another moth as well that night..
so yesterday i attempted to feed him a cricket that i have for my beardie ( about 1/2" big ) & he's eaten 3 since i introduced him to the bigger crickets

my Question IS : is this a problem that i could face with the cam, of him trying to eat something too large or over feeding him ? ... he seems to be doing fine with the hunting and eating of his crix ...but im not sure as to how many of these sized crickets i should be offering at a time ( over a day long period) because i dont want it to be a problem..
please , any help is greatly appreciated & i apologize for this being a possible * DUMB * question im just new to chams and want him to do the best possible
thanks
Bryant

It's not a dumb question at all! Little chams are eating machines and just because they TRY to eat something doesn't mean they SHOULD. Basically, you don't want to offer him anything larger than the width of his snout, especially if it has an exoskeleton like a crix. Soft bodied feeders like moths not as much of a problem unless they have spines on their legs. Actually, it's better to err on the smaller side anyway. More small feeders have more surface area to hold dusts and are easier for the cham to digest. One large meal takes more "processing" and there is a slightly higher chance that a leg or piece of exoskeleton gets stuck along the GI tract.

You said..."i attempted to feed him a cricket that i have for my beardie ( about 1/2" big ) & he's eaten 3 since i introduced him to the bigger crickets"...how old/big is your chameleon? The general rule is to judge the size of the food by the distance between its eyes...or what you would think would comfortably fit into its mouth. Soft-bodied insects (silkworms, waxworms,etc.) can be a little larger.

You said..."is this a problem that i could face with the cam, of him trying to eat something too large or over feeding him ?"...overfeeding can lead to constipation. I don't like to feed them insects that are too big either...but its likely okay once in a while when you are in a crunch.

You said..."i apologize for this being a possible * DUMB * question"..better to ask something than to be sorry after that you didn't!

Here are some sites that you might like to look at..
http://www.adcham.com/
http://www.chameleonnews.com/
http://www.uvguide.co.uk/uvinviv.htm

thanks for all ur help guy... i took this pic last weekend or so .. its the best i could get both HIM and my camera to cooperate with me . lol but just wanted to show u about the size of the cham...

While I wouldn't deliberately feed crickets that appear too large to your Chameleon if I were you, I wouldn't exactly worry about it if he gets something a little big once in a while either. They know what they want to eat and what they can handle a lot better than we do. They are the chameleons not us and to borrow from Rob Zerkle for a minute they don;t run around with little"chameleon rulers" in the wild measuring bugs before they eat them to see if they are too big. I see a lot of worrying about food items out there and a lot of it is overkill. My favorite one that I saw recently was someone making a point of pulling the back legs off of grasshoppers. I am assuming this was because they were worried about the spines causing some kind of damage to the chameleon. Well the fact of the matter is that crickets and roaches have those same exact spines as well and in fact they are worse in roaches than in the other two. I have fed grasshoppers to all my chameleons for years and have never ever had a problem related to feeding them. Kudos on feeding the moths btw moths are one of the best food sources out there and a lot people are afraid to use them due to fears of them being toxic. while it is true that some are toxic a lot of them are just fine and chances are that if they get a toxic one they'll spit it out first. Two examples I can give you of species that are reputed to be toxic that I have fed to chameleons successfully on many occasions are Luna moths and Gulf frittelary butterflies (sorry about the misspelling). I can tell you that within my own collection I get better egg production out of my reptiles when I feed moths butterflies and grasshoppers than when I don't.