Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I reciently purchased a female veiled chameleon at an expo and totally forgot to ask how old she was. Or maybe I did ask, but I asked so many other questions that I forget the answer. Could someone here tell me the approxamate age of a 4-5inch cham?
Would a picture help?
Also, should I have a nest box in her cage all the time, or only when she is close to laying?

Thanks for any help!

A picture would help a lot. You can't really age a cham based on size as there is a lot of variation. If the cham is from good quality parents who were healthy but not huge, your cham could also have those traits. If the parents were overfed, grown too fast and ended up larger that doesn't guarrantee a big hatchling. If it's not too hard to keep clean I don't see why having a nest box in the cage early isn't a good idea. This way she can consider it part of her habitat and may investigate it before she needs it. If she's still a growing juvenile she will grow in length, her casque will grow, and her general size also over time. Then her growth will slow down almost completely and her appetite will probably drop. She's reached her adult size. You can track whether she's developing eggs by weighing her. She'll start putting on weight fairly fast and looking lumpy around her hips. Not all unbred female veileds start developing infertile eggs. Some never do.

Here is a pic, it isn't great, but our computer was being REALLY slow and I was having trouble uploading the pictures. I'll try to post a better one tomorrow. I hate dial-up!

Anyway...I thought of a couple more questions:

Is it bad to watch her a lot? I've heard that they get stressed easily which is why I haven't tried to hold her and weigh her yet.

Also, in the picture you can see her ribs, is this bad? Or does it matter?

Thanks!
(My pictures always seem to be rather large, I'm not sure why...)

When the cham moves around you may see ribs off and on. A better way to judge whether she's too thin is to check the base of her tail. The cross section of her tail should be oval from top to bottom. Not completely round (too fat) and not showing defined muscles of the tail (too thin).

Chams don't like to be watched all the time. Obviously you need to check her out daily, but to be constantly in view with no place to retreat to is stressful. There may be some pics of veileds at different ages on the www.chameleonnews.com website that would help you age her.

Thanks for your help!

I'm gonna guess that she's around four months old. I tried for an hour to get my pictures to upload...but it didn't work. I've done it before with no trouble. I think my computer hates me.

I like that website by the way, thanks!