Breeding your veiled chameleon

September 30, 3:31 PMBaltimore Exotic Animals ExaminerHolli Friedland

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Baby female veiled chameleon.

Veiled chameleons should live alone most of the time. Two male veileds should never be put together for any reason. As with most male reptiles, they will fight if they are together.

Veiled chameleons reach sexual maturity in about six months.They can lay eggs two or three times each year. When the female veiled chameleon is receptive to breeding, she will change to a very dark, almost black, color with bright blue spots. There is no guesswork involved. If she’s that color, she’s ready to breed.

When you breed them, you should not just put them together and leave them for long periods of time. The male will harass the female until they are separated. If you don’t separate them, she could actually die from the stress. Put them together until they breed, usually within a few minutes, and then separate them. Repeat this every day for a few days to make sure they successfully bred.

After breeding, the female chameleon will be gravid (pregnant). She will eat a lot in the beginning. Calcium supplements, which are always important, are even more critical at this time. As she becomes more gravid, the female will eventually stop eating. The eggs take up so much space in her body that they press against the stomach, causing the female to have no room for food.

After a few months she will lay eggs. In the wild, chameleons dig holes and lay their eggs in the ground. In captivity, using a combination of vermiculite and peat moss works well. Fill a bucket with the combination and the chameleon will dig a hole and lay the eggs. She will spend hours and hours laying her eggs. Then she will meticulously fill the dirt back into the hole.

Incubating eggs can be tricky. You can put the eggs into vermiculite and water (50:50 by weight, not by measurement) and incubate them at about 85 degrees F. Most chameleons have a really long egg incubation time. Veileds incubate for about six months. Six months might seem long, but compared to other species that incubate for up to a year and a half, six months isn’t so bad.

When the babies hatch, they come out looking like miniature versions of their parents. They have a lot of babies, 20-70 per clutch, so beware. You will have to find homes for all of them!