Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a female veiled chameleon that just laid some eggs. Wanted to get opinions as to whether she might lay some more eggs.
I acquired her from a friend on Wed, June 25 who told me at the time that he 'suspected' this veiled might be gravid. He had introduced her to the male just 3 weeks ago. Female is 12 months old, male is 15 months old.
When I saw her, she was so full of eggs, she looked like an overstuffed sausage, very lumpy and bumpy. You could clearly make out the eggs bulging at her sides, and she was digging at the bottom of her cage.
I did not want to take possession of her in such an advanced state, but I did nonetheless. Because of her state, I elected to keep her in her current enclosure (about 40 gallon, with 2 glass sides, not a lot of room for sand) to reduce stress of moving to a minimum.
Friday, she began digging in earnest, and continued to dig for over 24 hours, but did not lay. The sand container provided in her enclosure was too small (as I suspected). She was becoming rather dehydrated (sunken eyes) from her efforts and was found Saturday evening exhausted, yet still in her hole (I thought she had died). I decided to take drastic measures. I took her out of her enclosure and slowly dripped water on her for over 30 minutes before she finally began drinking by herself. I then provided her a new trash can, filled with about 75 lbs moist sand.
Sunday, she laid her eggs in the sand. She laid 21 eggs. I carefully went through all the sand, looking for any eggs I might have overlooked, but found no more. I moved her back to her enclosure when I noticed she was no longer digging, but she was still rather big. I included a container of moist sand just in case.
My wife found two eggs on the enclosure floor (not in the container of sand) this morning (Monday). I'm not sure what to make of this discovery.
I took some pictures of the eggs and the female. I'll post them as soon as I can exorcise the gremlins in my camera
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Victor Gomez
gomezvi.tripod.com/sdchamkeepers/
gomezvi@yahoo.com

She may have some retained eggs that she could not pass for some reason. I would have a vet xray her to check. If she does not expel them it will probably cause death. Hope she does OK!