How do you feed your chameleons?

If you cup feed your chameleons, you're more likely to see tongue problems. They get close, then shoot. Like lifting weights only halfway, without proper streatching and excercise, muscles don't function properly.

Hunting is also somethign that suffers. If they are allowed to hunt free ranged insects, they expend some energy, excercise their tongues, and exhibit their natural hunting behaviors - and to me, that's part of the reason I keep them, to see their behaviors.

If you throw in bugs, they're likely to eat the majority of them before their gutload is gine. If they eat a few with little or no gutload, big deal. Insects are not empty shells.

In order to keep a good balance, I hand feed and bowl feed some insects, an dthen throw in the rest for free ranging. I've never gotten bowl feeding to work for my deremensis, anyway. After they've been in captivity for a few months, they ignore the bowls.

Thanks for the info Eric, its nice to see how others handle feeding and what methods work best for them.

I never had any tongue problems but I bucket fed in a 260 with the branches father up from the bucket.

I can see you pint that if you cup feed close to the cham it gives them no reason to try to get the food.

Thanks for the tips!

Eric,
Since bowl feeding and tongue problems have been brought up, I want to throw something out for those keepers who have, or will eventually get, a chameleon that has legitimate tongue extension problems. There can be a variety of causes for this, and not all can be rectified. We often nick-name such animals as "point-blank" because they essentially have to lap up the insects. In these situations, your chameleon can have a long life eating crickets etc out of a deli-cup feeder, 16 or 32 oz. 16 oz deli's are better for the females, for every now and then one will get down in it and not get out. Most know how to hang from their back legs, but no need to risk it. Adult males have no problem with a 32 oz cup. They will hang down into the cup to the extent necessary, and eat like a dog. Superworms presented in a broader sandwich-size gladware container will often help get past this type of handicap. And as I said in an earlier post, once the crickets are 3/8" size or larger, and free-ranging, do put a pice of carrot etc in the bottom of the cage, or they may put a life-long scar on the dorsal ridgeline of your chameleon while grabbing a midnight snack. Your chameleon will sleep right through being eaten. I have seen it about 25 times, especially with smaller caging.

Jim, great advise!

A friend of mine suggested a slice of orange in the cage bottom over carrots for the vitamin C is one better than the other or are both OK?

Wendy,
Peace. As for carrots, oranges, and spinach leaves (which are cool because they are loaded with good stuff, and small, and you can throw them in a salad yourself). I have to recommend carrots or greens. I have 80 acres of oranges out my back door, and we use to use oranges as the exclusive moisture source for our crickets before we went to sponge-bottom water bottles. We were never happy with our cricket yields, and due to some anecdotal info we got from a couple of cricket breeders, switched off the oranges to the water bottles. Our cricket yields (or cricket survivability to edible size) doubled. Too much citrus makes the crickets too acidic for their own good. You do need to get some vitamin C into your chameleons, but it is in most vegetables in adequate quantities, as well as every major reptile vitamin. I can see citrus on occasion, maybe one day out of 7.

Thanks, I have used oranges on a larger percent than carrots in the winter, in the summer I use pears and turnip greens (pear tree in the yard, my parents have a large turnip green garden) how do you feel about pears and turnip greens vs spinach?

LOL. Don't ask so many questions ! Any of the greens are fine, turnip or otherwise, although crickets show a preference for collards and spinach over mustard greens, turnip greens, etc. Don't know why. I really have no experience with pears, but could speculate that they might have a more acceptable acid content than citrus. If I had the option, I would always go with vegetables before fruit with crickets.

Thanks!

WOW!! I have actually learned alot from you guys reading this thread. There is so much work with keeping chameleons but it is so fun!! I have 3 veileds I have had my oldest one for 2 years and he is still doing great I have changed my crickets diet a million times cause I keep hearing diff stuff about what to gutload them with. right now I am using this food from grubco it is supposed to be a good gutload it is like a hard crumb food ever delt with that? I also have some recipie i want to put together that has everything from babyrice to dry seakelp to monkeychow that I got off a chameleon website I think it was ever heard of that? I have even used baby chicken feed cause i heard that was good? What do you guys use as a primary diet for you crickets most of the days of the week? dragonflyreptiles I do like the way you feed your chams with the big flowering pots that is a good idea I try using deli cups but most of the crickets escape pretty quick. I do hand feed most of the time to know that they are getting some good gut loaded crickets. But most of the time they free range and I usually just leave some of that hard crumb food in the bottom of the cage for them to eat on to help keep them gutloaded.

There are a few recipes out there for gut load, I just found it was easier and cheaper to buy it, I use progeckos.com gutload, it has worked really well for me. When I made myown it would up costing more and was probably not as good anyway.