asking again....

[labomb2]

I know I've asked this before, but never got a good answer. Has anyone ever had a problem with their veiled cham eating paper towel? Mine is at it again. he get a good grip on the edge and rips a good bit off and eats it. I use it on the bottom of his cage, not sure if maybe I should switch to carpet. It doesn't seem to harm him, but I think it might stop up his digestive system for a day or two. my concern this time is he is eating bigger pieces. any suggestions why he does this? Does he need greens? He often trys to eat the leaves of his fake plants.

[cheech]

i would try giving him some greens. some chams will eat them but mine won't. i would definatly take the paper towel out and either use carpet or you can just leave it bare since they usually spend there time on branches anyways.

[kinyonga]

I think you are tempting fate both with the paper towel and the fake plants since you are already stating that you think the paper towels are stipping up his digestive system for a day or two.

I've never had a problem with paper towels since I don't ever use them as a substrate. I don't use fake plants in veiled cages either.

I use real plants that have been well washed (both sides of the leaves, etc.) and I run lots of water through the soil to rinse it out too. I cover the soil with pebbles that are too big for the chameleon to ingest so that it won't eat the dirt (yup...they have been known to eat dirt too) in the plant pot or a type of playsand that I have found that, if eaten goes through the digestive system with no problems. This is the same sand that I use for egglaying chambers/containers since it has never caused infections when it gets into their eyes or mouths.

Usually when a chameleon is eating something like this it is looking for something that is missing in its diet....either minerals or moisture I would think. Do you gutload your insects? Use supplements? What kind of water do you use (tap, spring, filtered, distilled, etc.)?

You can use indoor/outdoor carpet, but it has its own problems....how do you keep it clean enough? Threads on the raw edges of it can be ingested and get tangled in the digestive system and cause problems.

My cages all have glass bottoms and so I put a piece of colored paper or foam (that you can buy at the craft stores) under the cage so that it looks nice but doesn't get dirty or eaten.

Hope this helps!