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Crickets are by far the most common insect used by reptile hobbyists today. They are considered by most chameleon keepers as their staple diet, meaning a diet that is fed on a daily basis as the main source of food for their animals. Crickets are a pretty easy insect to keep, but in large or small numbers, they require at least some daily care. Crickets should be kept at a temperature range between 75 and about 90°. At higher temperatures they will grow faster and die less, while at the lower temperatures, they will grow slower and live longer lives, but you will have more of a die off in the meantime. A small amount of crickets (up to 50) should be kept in a small plastic container with a lid. A 2 gallon size ice cream tub works fine. There should be no substrate in the bottom of this container. It should have some cardboard egg crating in it for them to hide in and to keep themselves separated and spread out a bit. Toiletpaper rolls also work well. There should be a small section of the top cut out of the center of the lid (about half of it) with an aluminum screening or metal screen glued into the hole, fine enough to keep them in if they jumped to it. This will provide them some ventilation and keep it from getting moldy inside the container. You should put a small glass jar lid in the bottom of the tub to keep for their food source. Crickets do best if fed with a dry gutload, available from a few sources. If you use a dry food , you will also need some type of moisture source. A slice of potato, orange, or apple works well. They will eat the dry food and get their moisture from these. Potatoes and carrots will last more than a day, and they are pretty good at fighting off mold. Dead crickets should be removed when seen or the entire container should be cleaned out about once a week (or both). If you're keeping larger amounts of crickets, the care is basically the same, but you will need a much larger container (a 30 gallon tupperware bin can hold around 1000 large crickets, as long as you have plenty of egg crating) and obviously you will need more food and more hiding places. Crickets will eat eachother if they get too thirsty or too crowded. Also, large crickets will eat small crickets, even if not hungry or thirsty, so different sized crickets should be kept separate. A well taken care of cricket will live up to 7 weeks from birth to death. BREEDING CRICKETS Crickets are one of the more difficult insects to breed, hatch, and raise, but if you need lots of them long term, it may be worth getting started with them now. Once crickets are around 4 to 5 weeks old (getting wings) they can begin breeding. Female crickets have a thin dark tube sticking straight out the back of them, at the end of their wings. Males do not. They use this to deposit eggs into moist dirt. When breeding crickets, they should be kept very clean and healthy and need to be fed every day. They will already be breeding. All you really have to do to get them to lay eggs is to provide them with a place to lay them. I use a small butter type plastic container (1 cup) and cut the whole lid out leaving only the rim around the edges. I then glue an aluminum screen in it's place. This keeps the male crickets from digging up and eating the eggs. I fill this with soaked and squeezed dry peat moss and pack it in there slightly. When you put the lid on with the aluminum screen it will hold it in tight. The crickets will stick their ovipositors (the tube) through the screen and into the peat moss to lay their eggs. Keep the peat moss moist by spraying it lightly every day. After a few days, take out the container and put it in a larger container with the lid on, but leaving very light ventilation (poke a hole). Keep it moist at all times and keep it around 90°, whether in an incubator or just somewhere warm, like on a light fixture that's always on etc. After about a week to 2 weeks, you will see very very small crickets appearing in there. It can take 5 or 6 days to hatch all the eggs even if they were all laid the same day. There's usually hundreds of tiny crickets in each of these 3 to 5 day batches or even thousands, depending on how many adults you had breeding/laying eggs. There you have it. You've bred crickets. Now the only problem you have is the incredible mortality rate crickets have in their first week. Once they start to hatch, the peat moss should be dumped into a small bin with very little ventilation and all the peat moss being laid on one side of the container with a vertical stack of egg crates on the other side. The babies will hatch when their time has come and a nice place to live will be ready. The pile of peat moss needs daily mistings and should always be kept moist until the babies are about 10 days old. The hardest part is separating baby crickets from the soil or peat moss. Babies should be taken care of the same as adults, only on a smaller scale. They should be offered a very fine cricket food and the moist peat will provide the humidity they need. Occasional small pieces of romaine will also give them moisture. The first week is by far the hardest time. Breeding crickets is really only worth it if you need a very large supply of very small crickets. BUYING CRICKETS If you are keeping more than two chameleons, we recommend buying crickets in bulk. The prices of doing this are much much less per cricket than buying at a local pet store, and you will get fresher and healthier crickets. An average price per cricket at a local store is around 10 cents a cricket. This is $10 for 100 crickets. If you buy crickets in bulk, you will generally pay (including shipping) about $14 for 500 crickets (less than 3 cents a cricket), or $16 for 1000 crickets (one and a half cents a cricket). So in theory, you could buy 1000 crickets, use them as you need, and if 800 of them died, you would still save money. It takes a little more effort in keeping the extra crickets alive (you're going to have to keep crickets alive no matter how you buy them), but it pays off several times over. Not to mention saving you from driving to the pet store twice a week. Shipping takes about 3 days, and they will arrive in a small cardboard box with screen sides on your doorstep. Check our LINKS page for several places to buy from.
Superworms (Zophobas Morio) are a caterpillar type worm that changes into a beetle. Superworms are similar to a common mealworm, except that they are much larger (up to about 2 inches long), much more active and they are a darker brown color with black bands. They are a great additional food item for any chameleon, and most chameleons love them. They can be easily kept in large numbers for a long time with little maintenance. All I do is get a 10 gallon tupperware bin, put about 2 inches of dry peat moss in the bottom of it and add worms! You can easily keep over 500 worms in a container like this. With about a 3 inch peat moss layer maybe even 1000. They won't change into beetles when they are crowded like this and they live for a very long time in this condition (not sure how long but at least a few months.... They never seem to die). They do best when kept slightly warm if possible (80-85°) but it's not necessary. They eat the same things crickets eat: basic grains, oatmeal, baby rice cereal etc. They should be given a moisture source every few days. Sprinkle some chopped veggies in the peat moss (not too much or it'll dry up and become messy) or putting a few 1 inch pieces of carrot in there. They will munch on a carrot for a few days, as it stays moist and resists molding well. They also love romaine lettuce and collared greens. Superworms also will periodically "shed" their shells, which will leave them with a transparent, white type color for a few hours. When presented to chameleons (usually 1 at a time) they seem to climb "up" well if placed on a screen wall. The chameleon usually just zaps the worm from the wall. If these worms make it to the potting soil or dirt, they will burrow and be lost forever, so keep an eye on them. You usually see them again as beetles a few weeks later. BREEDING SUPERWORMS If you decide to breed superworms, you will need a few things. First, TIME! The whole process takes months, from large worm to large worm, 2nd generation. The worms need to be separated from eachother to change into beetles. I do it by buying a few (depending on how many worms you're trying to get) containers from a craft store that are used to separate beads. Small screw/nut containers also work. Basically the worms just need to be left alone for a few weeks. They will not need food or water in this time, and they need to be stressed to change into beetles. The lack of food does it nicely. After about a week, they will change into a pupa which looks like a small alien. They will change into a beetle after about 3-4 weeks in this container. The beetles should be placed together in a small plastic bin with a grain bottom, like chicken mash mixed with some type of dry cricket food and/or oatmeal. There should be at least 5 tioletpaper rolls i n there with them piled up and a potato or two sliced into thin 1\4" slices and stacked like it was cut (vertical slices). Small amounts of vegetables and fruits should be offered every other day and the worms will do the rest. They will breed and lay eggs in this container (on the substrate or on the potato slices) which are very small and hard to see, but they're there. Don't clean the cage or remove anything since there's probably eggs everywhere. Remove the beetles as they die, or move them to another container after 2 weeks or so to start again. After 4-6 weeks, you'll notice tiny worms crawling around. When you do, the moisture source needs to be available again and you'll have TONS of new superworms. When the worms get about an inch long, they can be removed from this container and placed in a tub of peatmoss as described above.
These worms are a small type of grub, very soft bodied and white in color. They get about 3/4 inch long at best. They will turn into the waxmoth. Waxworms are best if kept in a refrigerator in a small plastic container. At this temperature, they will go into a hibernation-like state and will last alot longer. About 6 to 10 hours before they are needed, they should be pulled out of the cold temperature and allowed to "come back to life." They can be fed by hand or by setting them on a branch and they will be picked off the branch. They are pretty fragile and don't last long at room temperature. Dead waxworms turn black and become very soft (they almost melt if touched). These worms are considered an energy food and can lead to an overweight chameleon if fed too much. Less than 5 a week is the most I do, usually spread out to 1 a day or less. They should be kept in pine shavings and have a few small pieces of dry oatmeal and a drop or two of honey with them while being kept at room temperature. BREEDING WAXWORMS Breeding waxworms is somewhat complicated, and takes time and a little effort. Put a handful of worms (15-25 or more depending on how large a scale) in a small plastic or metal container with a tight lid. Have a thin layer of dry oatmeal or bran on the bottom of this, with a few random drops of honey on it. Put a few balls of crumbled up waxpaper in also. The moths lay their eggs in this. You will need to remove dead waxworms, as they tend to die regularly. The worms will spin into a cocoon within a week and about a week or more later, they will become moths. As moths they live only about a week at best and only breed within this time (don't eat). They breed and lay their eggs in the waxpaper. After the moths die, you can remove them and remove any other dead worms while waiting for the eggs. A week or so later you will have little waxworms crawling around the waxpaper. They grow pretty quickly and will need to be refrigerated soon. We don't normally breed waxworms, since large amounts of them can't be fed to a chameleon in any short amount of time and we have most of them either die or turn to moths before using them. MADAGASCAR HISSING ROACHES
These are roaches from the island of Madagascar, making them the only species of food item available commercially in the Untied States from the chameleon's native island. If you're keeping adults of this species, you're also breeding them whether or not you like it (if you have females and males). The adults at about 6 months of age will be up to about 3-4 inches long. Newborns are around a quarter inch long at birth and grow fast. Roaches are one of the best things there is to offer your chameleon, and can be a staple diet. Very nutritious, most chameleons love them, there are several sizes to choose from and they are full of good healthy meat. But there are a few drawbacks. They're difficult to keep in their container, very expensive compared to other insects, and they take a long time to get a colony going if you're going to breed them. Besides all that, they are easy to take care of. They need to be housed in a plastic or glass tank WITH A LID. But even the lid isn't enough because these roaches can climb virtually any surface, including glass. Babies are most often the ones that climb and try to escape. Letting them out can be stopped by putting a thin layer of Vaseline petroleum jelly around the top of the bin, about 3 inches wide and all the way around the inside. They can't get a grip on this at all and will be forced to stay inside. You will need to have them housed on a think layer of pine shavings like the kind commonly used for rodents and other small animals. You also need toiletpaper rolls and or egg crating in there with them for them to hide in. Usually 3 or 4 adults will pack into a toiletpaper roll to hide in the warm spot of the cage. They can be fed small amounts of dog or cat food in a small dish and will eat almost anything else offered to them. They can be a very low maintenance feeder insect. They will need some sort of moisture source offered to them about once a week, such as fruits or veggies, a small piece of romaine lettuce or a spoonful of creamy baby food. They also love small pieces of banana. These roaches need to be kept at about 90° for optimal growth and breeding. This can be done with a heat mat under the bin or a spot light on them with a small 25 to 40 watt bulb. There's basically 3 ways to do it: You can either buy a few small ones and feed them off (like I said, expensive.... Currently about $1-2 or more each, depending on the size and how many you get). You can buy a few babies or adults and wait the months or year it takes for them to get a good sized colony going, or you could also buy several adults, and feed all the offspring to your chameleons, which come rather quickly if you have enough adults. A female adult hissing roach will have a live-birth litter of 20-30 babies about every 2 months. These babies, if not fed to your animals, will be able to breed at about 6 months of age. If breeding roaches, a 1 to 4 male to female ratio is ideal. These roaches can be kept together as different sizes. Adults and newborns get along fine. Several other species of roach are available commercially. Some roaches don't climb plastic and others can fly. Madagascar Roaches should not be fed to a panther or veiled chameleon once they grow past about 2" in length.
Houseflies are a great additional item to a chameleon's diet, especially young chameleons. Only commercially raised houseflies should be used. Because of what they naturally feed on, wild flies can have various diseases and can also introduce parasites to your chameleon. Houseflies are available from various sources (check our LINKS page) and usually come as a pupa. They look like a small brownish red seed and will hatch within a week after when you get them. They will live only a few days at most in the container you got them in at room temperature, so use them quickly. To slow their emergence, they can be kept in the fridge for up to no more than 2 weeks as a pupa and will emerge after being taken out of the fridge. Flies that have just hatched can be kept for up to a week also in the fridge. They won't move much while in there since the cold temperature will slow them down so much. While the flies are being kept at room temperature, they will need to be fed (unless you're using them all in a day). They will eat any type of cricket food, or fine grain type foods. They will also eat some veggies. We give them a few green peas with the skin taken off. To feed chameleons flies, the best way is to put the flies in (again) the fridge for a few minutes until they all stop moving. Then quickly take them out and tap out as many as you want into the chameleon's cage. After a few minutes they will all be flying around getting eaten. This needs to be done quickly because after being taken out of the cold, some of the flies can fly within a minute or less (they crawl within 30 seconds) and will be trying to escape while the door's open. Other good ways to feed flies to your chameleon are to get a small bowl and put some of the pupa in the bowl and put that in the cage. So as they hatch, the chameleon will eat them, and they will hatch at all different times, which spreads the feedings over the next day or so. If you have several younger chameleons in one cage, put the whole container in the cage and crack open the lid, so that over the next 2 or 3 days however many flies you got in the container will hatch out and there will be food for all. Flies usually come with anywhere from about 100-600 in each container and they're pretty cheap. Flies are most eagerly taken by younger chameleons, anywhere from about 2 to 6 or 7 months, but some older chameleons love them also. Often large chameleons ignore them. Probably because it's just not enough food for the effort it takes to catch them.
Fruit flies are probably the easiest feeder insect to keep and breed. Unfortunately they are only edible by a chameleon until about 3 months old. There are 2 species of flightless fruit fly commonly used by hobbyists, and they are Drosophila Hydei and Drosophila Melanogaster. The Hydei variety are slightly larger, about 1\8", breed slower and live longer, up to about a month. Melangoaster are about 1\10" to 1\12" and reproduce faster and will live for about 2 weeks. These are both kept and bred the same way. All you need is a few wide mouth glass jars (sterile) with some sort of VERY fine screen top or a piece of cloth held on by the outer lid or a rubber band. Make a mixture of 8 cups potato flakes, ½ cup of powdered sugar and a third cup of yeast. Mix these up and add an equal mix of this and a water/vinegar mixed at a 1.1 ratio, for example, 1 cup of dry mix, ½ cup of vinegar, and ½ cup of water (this amount will make about 3 jars worth). Put a scoop of this "paste" in each jar (1" deep or less). You may need to add water or more dry mix to get the consistency right. It should be similar to mashed potatoes. Too wet a mixture and the flies will stick to it and not be able to move in the jar. Too thick and the mixture will get dry on top making it difficult for the maggots to move around. We mix it before we need it and keep the dry mix dry until we're ready to make new colonies. Cut a few small clippings of a screen material (fiberglass screen works good) and stick it in the medium for the flies to walk on and space themselves out on. Start with about 20-30 flies and set aside for a week or two. You will have new flies in about 2 weeks for the smaller fly species, and 3-4 weeks for the larger, Hydei flies. The flies will quickly reproduce in the jar. Leave new flies alone for 7-10 days and feed them all off. This gives them enough time to breed, lay eggs and you'll have them out of the culture and gone before they die. You normally should have a constant yield of flies for at least a month and a half from when new flies start hatching. Sometimes the paste will go bad and other times the flies will reproduce until the paste is gone. In the lifetime of each of these colonies, hundreds of flies will be produced. Make several jars and use them in rotation, to allow for reproduction which will replenish their numbers. Fruit flies are only eaten by young or baby chameleons. After about 3 months of age, chameleons generally ignore them. A switch to houseflies will be welcomed at that point. These flies are perfect for all ages of pygmy (dwarf) chameleons. *CLICK HERE to order Fruit Flies from us! TOMATO HORNWORMS / GREEN GIANTS
These are very large worms that are bright green in color and have a very distinctive red horn on their back. They are commonly seen in the US on tomato plants and are usually considered a pest insect. They are similar to Silkworms, but get even bigger and grow much faster, from ½ inch to 4 inches in 2 weeks! They can weigh up to 10 grams, about the size of a 3-4 month old panther chameleon! They are available at some commercial insect providers and are quite expensive (for an insect). Once they are about 2 inches long, they can be offered to most chameleons and the bright green color gets an excellent response from the chameleon. The largest of panther and veiled chameleons can eat full sized, 4 inch hornworms. These worms will turn into a large moth, often referred to as a "hummingbird moth" with a 4 inch wingspan about 3 weeks after birth. Wild caught hornworms should not be fed to chameleons, since they are almost always eating tomato or tobacco plants, which are toxic to chameleons. See the "Wild Insects" section at the bottom of this page for further information.
Silkworms are another great staple diet for chameleons becoming very popular since they are nutritious, slow and don't escape. They range in size from very tiny to quite large, up to 3 inches. They are very soft bodied and contain lots of moisture. They can be kept in an empty plastic bin like other insects. They ONLY eat fresh mulberry leaves naturally and continue this sometimes difficult trend into captivity. There are special "chows" you can buy, but they are relatively expensive and you need to prepare them. Silkworms shouldn't be played with or moved around. The less you disturb them, they better they live. Newborn silkworms should be fed silkworm chow or very small fresh mulberry leaves for the first week of life. If you come across some silkworms and decide you like them and want to get really started with them, I suggest ordering silkworm eggs from Silkworm Farm (link below) and hatching them out and raising them. It's TONS cheaper than buying grown worms and you'll get TONS more worms for the money. I prefer to hold off feeding silkworms to chameleons until the worms have gotten fairly large. By doing that, the worms will be much more of a meal for a chameleon and you can feed off only 2-3 silkworms a day per chameleon, compared to 5-7 if they're small. Larger silkworms also have a higher moisture content compared to smaller worms. *CLICK HERE to order from SilkwormFarm.com Some large chameleons are known to eat pink mice, smaller lizards or hatching birds. Technically, there are nutrients and vitamins in these animals that can be missing from any plain insect, but these are by no means necessary. If your chameleon is supplemented properly and getting a varied diet, there's no reason to give vertebrates. Pink mice are high in fat and a chameleon eating mice more than once a month will become "gout," meaning overweight and lazy. Some chameleons refuse to eat vertebrates and other chameleons run from them. Large and aggressive chameleons will usually eat mice, even good sized ones. Females that have just laid eggs are the only ones I think are in need of possibly offering a mouse to, since it will help them gain weight back quickly, but most of my female panthers won't even eat them. We have occasionally offered mice to our larger chameleons with no obvious good or bad effects. We haven't done this very many times, as we see no need for it. Pinkie mice have a higher fat content and lower calcium level than "hopper" mice, or mice that are beginning to grow hair.
Wild caught insects can be a very good addition to a chameleon's diet, but should be chosen carefully. These new insects are great to get stubborn eaters going again and add some "natural" variation in the nutrients a chameleon gets from it's food. Often while outside getting some sun, a butterfly or grasshopper will come along and the chameleon is usually more than eager to get ahold of it. I've seen on several occasions a chameleon of mine outside chewing on something it just caught. It the biggest problem with this is the potential of exposing your chameleon to an insect that has pesticides or chemicals on it. If you're far away from any threat, it's probably safe to catch some bugs and offer them to your chameleon. Spiders in general should be avoided as should other possible threatening species of insects, as well as Monarch butterflies. A great place to catch small insects for smaller chameleons is to take a large sweep-net (fine netting) and sweep it through tall grass. Quickly close the open end of the net and check for insects. This can be a good way to get some emergency food for new babies or while waiting for your shipment of pinhead crickets. Just make 100% sure it's a safe clean area. Wild flies and houseflies should be avoided since the substances they naturally feed on can leave them with diseases or parasites. So should wild hornworms because of their (naturally) toxic diet. Commercially available houseflies and hornworms, on the other hand, are great additions to a chameleon's diet.
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