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I saw a gorgeous panther chameleon recently at the local herp society meeting and am thinking about purchasing a baby. I've been surfing the net and looking into the archives of this forum to get as much care information about panther chameleons. I still have a few questions...

1. Are aluminum screen cages okay for panther chameleons? It seems most people recommend them for their ventilation but I've read that panthers have large nails and climbing on these screens can damage their nails or toes. Is this true or another example of misinformation from the internet?

2. What do people do with their chameleons when they go on vacation? If I go on a short vacation for two days or less than a week, would I need to get someone to pet-sit the chameleon (add water to drip cup, feed)? Will the animal survive without care for a short period of time? My snakes and geckos can survive a couple of days without attending to and I'm hoping panther chameleons can too.

3. Can I use silkworms or gut-loaded mealworms as a staple food? I'd rather not have to use noisy, stinky crickets.

4. Do any of you feed frozen thawed crickets to your chameleons? The fellow at the herp society meeting has trained his chameleons to eat gut-loaded, frozen thawed crickets from his fingertips. His chameleons look great, have bred for at least 2 generations, and some are almost 10 years old.

5. I have an animal room that I heat to about 70-72 degrees in the winter. If I offered a low wattage heat lamp for a basking spot, would these temps be okay? Is the ambient temp too low for the winter time?

6. What would be a good price to pay for a baby panther chameleon? I saw someone mention a price increase in the Kammer's website. How much were they selling for before or what's the history with the pricing of panther chameleons?

7. If I used a dripping cup and misted the cage once in the morning, would that be enough to meet the animal's humidity requirements? The room is pretty dry. Will a dripping cup provide enough humidity throughout the day? I guess I could also purchase one of those automatic misters (zoomed's habba-mist) if needed. Any positive or negative experiences with this product?

Thanks ahead of time for your replies. I know some of the answers to the heat and humidity questions are specific to my room situation but I'd like to have you speculate a bit based on your knowledge and experience. It will help me a lot since I have no experience with chameleons.

It's past my bedtime but I just had to take this one. Those were good questions, and I won't be the only one to respond.
-Aluminum screened cages are ok for chameleons and are generally recommended, the issues come when the cage doesn't have enough branches or thick enough plants to allow the chameleon to crawl around on them. If there's no other route, they will climb on the screen. Some climbing on the screen is fine, but it's when they do it all the time that it becomes a problem. I've never had a problem with a nail being torn out, but I have had a chameleon and almost 2 file down their nails because of it. They are still ok on trees, but it kinda makes them clumsy on the screen and they fall off sometimes. In a 2x2x3 foot screen cage, you should probably have 2 large ficus plants (or other similar sized plants) reaching almost all the way up. There should also be several horizontal branches up top and a few going from top to bottom.
-2 days would probably be close to the max to leave a chameleon alone. I've gone out of town for the weekend and left some home from a Friday afternoon until a Sunday afternoon and been ok. I also had a mountain chameleon die soon after I let one of my friends take care of it for 4 days. So it all depends. Come up with a water source that can remain on as long as possible. And hydrate the chameleon very well before the time off. Angle the cage in a way that water will drain off a bottom corner into a bucket or something and make the water drip the whole weekend. I've done that and it worked great. I had a few very small Jacksons chameleons that needed mistings and I just left them with a (different) friend while I was gone. The food isn't as big of a deal. Just leave some extra crickets or whatever there. One night with some extra food is ok as long as there's also something for the bugs to munch on instead of your chameleon. Or train them to bowl feed and eliminate this problem.
-Silkworms are a great staple food, and besides crickets and roaches, are probably the only normal staple food. They will need to be supplemented a little more than crickets since they can't effectively be gutloaded and they are slightly less available than crix, but if you can manage that, go for it.
-Frozen crickets? I guess you could train them to eat that, but it would probably take a while to train them that and I don't know anyone that sells frozen crickets. I would assume live would be cheaper and simpler. Not as time consuming for you. I don't think that him feeding frozen/thawed crickets has anything to do with his chameleons looking good. I don't know of anyone else that does that. Most panthers are pretty easy to train to eat from your fingers (live food).
-70 degrees would be ok in the winter. The summer room temperature should be 75-80, but 70 is about what I keep mine at in the winter and it's been fine. During the day, you'll want a hotter spot, around 95 for a panther and at night temps in the mid 60's are ok.
-A good price to pay for a panther chameleon depends on who you get it from. Generally, you get what you pay for, but not quite in every case. Just a few months ago Kammers sold panthers at $200 at about 3 months old. Now they're 250, assumingly since they still sell out of the clutches very fast. Most breeders are somewhere around 200-225 at 3 months old and up from there depending on age and availability. Shows sometimes have lower prices.
-I have no experience with auto-misters, but lately the trend is to use warm/hot water anyways, which an auto mister doesn't do unless set up that way. I use a pressurized mister with warm water twice a day for all my chams and 3 or 4 times for really young ones (less than 4 months). I also drip water twice a day, usually both in the afternoon (early and late) when temps are highest. My room humidity is about 60-65 percent year round. The mister would be a great asset in the weekend getaway thing you asked about earlier though. No worries about water.
I hope I answered your questions basically LOL. If I missed anything let me know.
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Tyler Stewart
Las Vegas NV

Another thought for the humidity issue, I live in Ohio, so in the winter our humidity is really low because of central heating, so I use an ultrasonic humidifier. They work great, you can get them at wal mart for like $25. I got mine off eBay for like $7, and if you find a local seller, you can even skip shipping. You can even put pvc piping into it and pipe the mist where ever you want(if you have more than 1 cage) hope this helps

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