News from the Veiled Chameleon Cage

On Thursday, our femaled veiled laid another THIRTY-SIX eggs! These eggs are mostly likely fertilized. Certainly Fat Letta and Mr. Conehead had enough quality time together to ensure this. Ahem.

The incubators are on my kitchen counter. One incubator has some eggs laid at the beginning of December. I don't believe those eggs are fertilized because I was out of town when the male and female would've needed some together time. And no one in the Summy household thought of this. :)


Here are two of the three deli dishes, each with 12 eggs. The containers of water are to keep everything humid. The temp is set just below 80. The eggs will be in the incubator for 7-9 months.


Here's our postpartum female. Her poor skin is slack and sagging. Ahhh..but others of us can relate to that!


Our postpartum female noshes on a vitamin-dusted cricket.

Take a look at this cageful of babies. Veiled chameleons are actually anti-social, but I had just dumped in a bunch of crickets so they're all hunting.

And in BIG news--I found a buyer for all 32 babies!!! At $17/per baby. I'm making the delivery on Monday. Whoohoo!

Update from Veiled Chameleon Incubator

You may recall that we have two clutches of veiled chameleon eggs in our incubators. The first clutch of 51 eggs was laid near the end of February. The second clutch of 33 (larger) eggs was laid near the end of April.

You may also recall a discussion in our house where Mr. Summy and Child #2* expressed a desire to turn over all, or at least half, the eggs to the pet store for hatching. But I, a huge lover of challenges, wanted to try hatching the eggs at home, despite past failures.

Because it would've been my job to transport the eggs to the pet store, the eggs are still in incubators in my kitchen!

(*Child #2 is the SUPPOSED owner of the veileds. But, really he's gone all teenager and is leaving the care of the reptile to his lovely mother and even lovelier sister.)

At the risk of jinxing the entire operation, I'm here to report that ALL the eggs are still going strong! This is longest we've gone without losing any eggs. In the past, eggs have shriveled up or gone moldy! It's tough to keep the humidity just right in the incubator.

Here's the method I've come up with that seems to be working. (Knocking on wood!)

An egg is starting to shrivel, collapse in on itself.

Syringe + bottled water to the rescue! I dribble water from the syringe tip INTO THE SOIL AROUND the shrivelling egg, making sure to never get the egg itself wet.

Ah....all is right with the world. The egg all plumped up again. Sometimes it takes a couple of hours for the egg to absorb the water. Sometimes a couple of days.

Following are the variables I've changed with these two clutches:

1. the delivery of moisture to shrivelling eggs
We used to spray around the eggs in trouble. Now, I'm injecting the soil around the egg with water.

2. I'm draping a tea towel over the little window in each incubator. This keeps it darker in the incubator.

3. I'm "cooking" the eggs at a lower temperature--below 80.

Yes, yes, I'm obviously getting into this hatching business just a little too much! But I can't help myself!

My Town Monday: News from the Veiled Chameleon Cage

NEWS FLASH! Our veiled chameleon has laid another clutch of eggs!

!t's been about two months since the last batch, so it's her quickest turnaround time. From everything I've read, she's shortening her life span by being so prolific. But I don't know how to convince her to stop and take up another hobby. You see, she'll produce eggs with or without the male. And she has to lay them, or become eggbound and die.

Anyway, here is our brave little mother in the five-gallon flower pot "birthing chamber". She has been digging for 3 1/2 hours. You can see she still has quite a bit of work ahead of her.



The male chameleon is inches away from the flower pot and seems oblivious to all the digging activity. He's basking under a warm sun lamp and shedding.



Seven and a half hours later, the little mother emerges, smoothes over the sand and climbs up the artificial silk plant. I sprayed her down and brushed off the dirt. She drank from a leaf and gobbled down a few crickets then, then vegged. Can't blame her!


She laid the LARGEST egg she has ever laid!! It was ONE INCH LONG. Sorry for the blurry pic. I probably shook in my excitement. Or stood too close. :) Keep in mind that she's only about six inches, minus the tail. Anyway, she laid THIRTY-THREE EGGS. (Less than the 51 of the last clutch, but more of these eggs are big.)

Please check out posts by the other My Town Monday participants by clicking here.

FIFTY-ONE EGGS!!

Here is a deli dish with some of the eggs. I stuck a quarter in there to give you some perspective.

It took me an hour to dig them all up and get them nestled in damp vermiculite (this soil-type stuff) and into the incubator. Mind you, it took the female veiled chameleon over twelve hours to dig the tunnel and lay the eggs. That's the longest it's taken her. And that's the most eggs she's ever laid. Fifty-one eggs! If you saw her in real life, you'd be scratching your head and wondering where she tucked them all away.

The current argument at our house: Should we try to hatch these eggs ourselves or should we turn them over to the pet store for hatching?

We haven't had much luck in hatching eggs. Out of the 91 (I think that's the right number) eggs thus far, we've only had two live births. And the babies only lived for about a week each. Child #2, who is the owner of the veileds but who has morphed into a 16 year old and has little to do with his chameleons, wants to have the pet store incubate the eggs. His mother, who handles the bulk of the chameleon care, wants to try hatching them again. I know our stats are grim, but I feel that we've learned a lot and I can't resist a challenge! A challenge Child #4 and I could take on!

A little additional info: If the pet store hatches the eggs, they take half of what they would be pay you for the babies (about $25/month-old baby). For me, it has nothing to do with the money. We're never going to get rich or even pay for a week's worth of groceries with the veiled chameleon endeavor. Not when you add in the price of live crickets, meal worms, electricity for the heat lamps, etc.

Happy Friday to all!

From the chameleon cage...

This post could also be labeled WHAT I WAS DOING AT 1:30 THIS MORNING. YAWN.

A little after noon yesterday, our gravid (as in filled to the brink with eggs) veiled chameleon decided it was time to lay eggs. You can kind of see her to the left of the "birthing bucket." She lumbered down from the top of the cage to scout out possible birthing places. Really, the "birthing bucket" is her only option (in terms of diggable sand); she just hasn't figured it out yet. I ended up warming the sand in the microwave and that helped her decide to get down to business.

She dug a tunnel until she was no longer visible. All afternoon and all evening, I could hear her scritching and scratching away. She was in the tunnel until about 1:20 a.m. By this point, I was panicked. She'd never taken so long. She wasn't making a sound. I was convinced she'd died. (In my defense, it was late, and you know how the imagination runs wild then.)


Here's my "birthing spoon." You can see a little clutch of eggs, just waiting for me to unearth them and place them in the incubator.

I made a cup of tea and starting carefully excavating about 1:30 a.m. My house was quiet and dark except for the kitchen where I was working. Yes, I was tired, but honestly? I was just so thrilled the little mother was okay, albeit tired, sandy and somewhat dehydrated.

Guess how many eggs? Here are two hints. From her head to the base of her tail (so not including her tail), she measures about 6 inches. Each egg is about 1/2 inch in length.