Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a 6 mo old veiled cham (clarice). I know that babys eat about 15 crickets a day..... she eats about 20-25 medium dusted and gut loaded crickets a day. Is that ok? is she still considered a baby? When will she slow down.....
Thanx

No she's not a baby anymore. Female veileds can become reproductively mature at about 8 months (not that you should breed her at that age!), so her most rapid growth has passed. They can start developing infertile eggs fairly early if overfed too, so to avoid overly large clutches of eggs you need to control her diet now. It often works to feed her one larger meal every other day with maybe a snack on the off day. To make up for less volume of food make sure the food she gets is properly gutloaded. This is more important than relying on dusts. Cut the dusts back too. Dust with calcium twice a week and vitamins once every 2 weeks. At about a year of age you should dust with calcium once a week, vitamins once a month at most.

Well its better to have them eat than not, but overeating can cause some problems at her age.

I would feed her larger crickets if you can, she shouldn't eat as many. If she has crickets in her cage all the time, take most of them out. You can control what she eats, give her 8 to 10 large crickets, and let her be satisfied with that, she's not going to go hungry.

Lots of captive female Veileds overeat if thay are provided the means to do so. She probably won't slow down on her own. The major problem that this causes is that they tend to produce massive clutches of eggs. At six months old she is not a baby anymore, she is a juvenile but still growing rapidly. You don't want her producing huge cluctches while she is still rapidly growing. She'll pull calcium out of her bones in an effort to fertilize her eggs. Do what you can to slow her eating down.