Veiled

Originally Posted by Cookiegirl

Once a week they get a pinkie mice one or 2. This helps with their calcium needs especially the females.

Pinky mice don't have any calcium... They don't even have fully formed bones. Its just cartilage. This does not help with their calcium needs. The pinky mice receive the calcium from mothers milk and grow into developed mice.

Originally Posted by Casey Hulse

When we used to breed them, we kept a live golden pothos plant in with them, you could see little wedge shaped bites on the edges of the leaves. We used to rinse the plant very well, and wait a week or so to make sure there was no pesticide on the leaves. They really enjoy them, plus you can set up a "dripper" to keep the plant watered. There are a few other plants they like also, I think begonias are good also. We used a plastic cup wired to the side of the cage to feed them, make sure if the cham. falls in the cup he can climb out.

My son came into town and we went to the plant nursery, I got a bunch of stuff including a pothos, some ferns, and even a 7 foot tall ficus tree. I am looking forward to getting his new cage and 'decorating' it.

Originally Posted by Will Hayward

Pinky mice don't have any calcium... They don't even have fully formed bones. Its just cartilage. This does not help with their calcium needs. The pinky mice receive the calcium from mothers milk and grow into developed mice.

This is a quote from the leopard gecko manuel.It would also apply to any gravid female."Feeding pink mice once every two weeks also provides an excellant source of vitamins and minerals, including calcium and preformed vitaminD3". It is on page 36 of the leopard gecko manual by Philippe de Vosjoli with Roger Klingenberg, D.V.M. and Ron Tremper. I speak only from experiance my females have successfuly layed 3 clutches of eggs. I give them one pinkie mice once a week. My vet is an exotic vet . I told her about the pinkie mice and she also agreed this is a good thing to do.

Is that Live or f/t? I will do some research on this topic, I am very interested in the nutritional value and improvement to the over health and breeding of veiled chameleons. Have you done any breeding results regarding females that have been feed pinkies before breeding or anyting related to he over all size and growth rate for chameleons that have been feed pinkies?

I am going to apply a certain amount of logic to this and lets see what you all think. Pinkies as an entity have not formed the bones and structure that you would normally associate with calcium. I can see a great deal of protein for meal given the nature of the pinkie over the normal meal of insects or larvae.

Now for the logic, what that pinkie is pulling a great deal of from momma's milk is calcium.....for the same reason you tell your kids to drink milk for strong bones.....my bet is that a great deal of the nutritional value and content of its nursing is the basis to build to be a weaned mouse.

So I can firmly believe in the content of calcium in the pinkie....and no there are no scientific studies. If anyone wants to send me say a base population of say 1000 veileds I would be happy to conduct the statistical study of growth for this to be documented. Oh and whoever sends the veileds will get a footnote and a dedication for the paper.....any takers.

Originally Posted by csreptiles

Is that Live or f/t? I will do some research on this topic, I am very interested in the nutritional value and improvement to the over health and breeding of veiled chameleons. Have you done any breeding results regarding females that have been feed pinkies before breeding or anyting related to he over all size and growth rate for chameleons that have been feed pinkies?

I feed them live pinkie mice. I do not start feeding them pinkie mice until they are about 8 months old. All of my mothers have received one pinkie mice a week . They have layed healthy clutches. I do not have any other to compare because that is what I have always done.

Sandy:

I hope you understand I believe your doing it right. And your certainly no hurting the animals by feeding the pinkies.....

Keep up the good work!

Thank you for the nice comments. I read and researched alot about breeding veileds. One of the books I read said you may offer them pinkie mice. Since none of my mothers have become eggbound which is sometimes caused from lack of calcium I must be doing something right. I am new to breeding so I want to do every thing right to have healthy babies.

hey this post is in response to Sandy's post back at the beginning (post #3 I believe. Sorry to repost so long after the last, but I haven't had time to be on the forum in a while. Sandy, you mentioned that you give your chams grapes. You may want to use caution in feeding grapes. There have been recent reports of grapes causing kidney failure in dogs and cats. The mechanism is unknown at this point and the toxic dose is not known either. There have not been any reports of this occurring in reptiles yet, but I tend to not feed them to any of my pets because so little is known about the toxicity at this point. Just thought you may want to know!

-Julie

Thanks I have heard that grapes are bad for dogs also. I have not fed any of my chams grapes in a couple of months. I did read in a book that you could feed them grapes. I think I will hold off on the grapes for now. I continue to feed them one pinkie mice a week. I have not had any trouble with it. Someone asked if it is live or frozen. I feed them live pinkie mice