Cute baby chameleons eat fruit flies (Ch. calyptratus) [Inferion7]

Chamaeleo calyptratus

Veiled chameleon (English)
Chameleon jemenský (Česky)
Chamaleón velado (Español)
Dad Jemenchamäleon

1851 (Duméril & Bibron)

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Chamaeleonidae
Genus: Chamaeleo

This video is a hint how you can feed your baby chameleons for the first month of their lives.

Feeding options
This video is also a guideline about feeding freshly hatched chameleons up to one month of life. You can notice that I was feeding them on fruit flies (species Drosphila hydei) that is a good option to begin with. You can also use micro crickets (Acheta domestica, Gryllus assimilis, Gryllus bimaculatus) or micro roaches (Blaptica dubia or Shelfordella tartara) or micro grasshoppers (do not feed them on species Schistocerca gregaria, because they can hurt them or even kill them (one micro grasshopper of this species had bitten one of my baby chameleon and it was scared a lot). I prefer buying Locusta migratoria, that is species unable to climb on smooth surfaces and it should not attack your chameleons, but this type of feeding is very expensive, because you would need hundreds or thousands of them.

Fruit flies
Much cheaper way is to feed them on crickets, frankly, if you have more than 20 baby chameleons and you want to take care of them as good as possible buy at least 1 liter of them (thousands of them) – your chameleons will eat it, without doubt. The first day they would probably will not eat – I tried to give them small crickets without jumping legs and one chameleon tried to hunt it and it ate on of them later (my older video). But I would recommend you to begin with fruit flies – I have bought small 7 boxes of them and there were some larvae of flies, they were hatching every day and there were about several hundreds of them daily – they are quite small and they can only „walk“ or jump, they do not fly. I was not taking care of them, they were hatching without any help, without water, without anything – I take care of every food that is used to my pets (fresh food for them – it will not attack or bite your animal if they are well fed).

Feeding
I was feeding my chameleons three times a day on fruit flies, because I had a lot of them and they always ate them all (chameleons are excellent killers even if they are baby and only one day old). I was also giving them water two or three or even four times a day, they drank quite often. Lately, when they were 1 month old I was feeding them on crickets and bigger food, I was also going three times a week to a meadow for “real” food, such as locusts, grasshoppers, flies, bugs, butterflies and so on. (No wasps or very colorful bugs).
At the end of this video you can see a picture of male chameleon (I do not know which one it was in this video) that was fed exactly by this guideline and you can see how beautiful and big he has begun even though he is now only 6 months old. His new owner is taking care of him very well (maybe better that I did).

The terrarium
You can see the whole terrarium in this video, including paper towels (instead of peat or sand), ventilation (that was upgraded later - I added front netting), flowers, ladder, branches of willow and so on. I think it is a good inspiration for you. Sizes of the terrarium are 60 x 40 x 30 (hight x length x depth). About the ventilation - there are two bars of perforated sheeting, one is in the front part underneath the sliding doors and the second one is on the top of the terrarium – it should be at least a half of the roof, but I have only a narrow bar – that is the reason why I changed the sliding doors for the front netting.

I hope this text would help you. Enjoy the video, watch my other chameleon videos and may the force be with your pets. Music was composed by me using my stage digital piano Yamaha NP-V80 and Magix music maker. I rendered it in Sony Vegas Pro 13.