Chameleon Breeder Podcast With Bill Strand

Nutrition is of prime importance for us chameleon keepers and this requires a great deal of work in the care and keeping of our feeder insects. Those crickets coming from the pet store are likely empty shells and need to be fed to be useful! The Repashy Bug Burger product is a powder that can be tied with boiling water and will turn into a nutritious gelatin that can be cut into squares and fed to your feeder insects. This save enormous amounts of time! So I describe my Day 5 gift giving pick of Repashy Bug Burger!

My gift recommendation today is the Log Lunch feeder run cup by Jim Rykbost of Sunset Chameleons! This is a functional work of art which provides your chameleon with feeder insects contained so they don't hide in the cage, but still the movement that chameleons need to recognize food. And they are individually hand carved and painted. A very nice addition to your chameleon cage! If you would like to snag one of these beauties then you can order from the sunsetchameleons website    

Mountain Dragons is a photo journal recording the travels of Jan Stipala across the highlands of Kenya to document the chameleon species there. It is the most beautiful book we have in the chameleon community and is my day 3 pick for great gifts for people that love chameleons. This book is a wonderful one to cuddle up with and would actually be a great gift for anyone who enjoys reptiles or just wants to learn more about the natural world.

My choice for the second gift giving recommendation is a cup of Black Soldier Fly Larva! BSFL (as the are called) are a nutritious feeder that can give your chameleon diet variety. The bonus is that they start as grubs, which chameleons love, and turn into flies, which chameleons love! So, take a listen as to how you can treat that special chameleon in your life!

Join me for 12 days of chameleon gift recommendations where I publish one recommendation a day for the next 12 days! My pick for day 1 of the Chameleon gift giving season is the Repti-Riser by Jason King of Kings Reptiles on Etsy. This innovative product provides an elegant solution to our problem of lifting UVB lights off the top of the cage!

Today we are going to talk about going into this holiday season thinking about the chameleon community. We’ll talk about how we can make a difference just by supporting the small business and content creators that are out there right now. You can even do meaningful support without spending money! Let’s care for our community like we care for our chameleon environments!

If you have an interest in reptiles and sharing that interest with others you can do so by joining the growing number of reptile educators and influencers. But you have to decide just what kind of influencer you want to be. In this episode I talk about what is involved in becoming a reptile community educator.

Today we are going to learn how to determine the sex of hatchling panther chameleons. It is tricky, but a skill that can be learned. Carolyn Laframboise from Frams Chams will be joining me and share with us her method of giving that ID to panther chameleons.  

Today I talk with Jan Stipala about what kinds of environments Jackson’s Chameleons are found in. Jan is the author of Mountain Dragons which is our community’s most beautiful book on chameleons. To author this book he travelled the mountains of Kenya documenting the chameleon species there. But today will be strictly Jackson’s Chameleons. I wanted to know what the environmental conditions were like if one was to stand in their natural habitat.

Today I talk about the pregnancy period of the Jackson’s Chameleon to help you understand the steps before the babies are born. The live bearing nature of Jackson's Chameleons can be a mystery, but there are things that we can notice. In this episode I talk about the different stages of pregnancy in the Jackson's Chameleon.

Today I talk with the creative force behind the Neptune the Chameleon show on YouTube and Tik Tok. We talk about what it takes to put on  show in good chameleon husbandry and what insights she has to the state of chameleon education on the frontier edge of social media platforms.

Those of us dedicated to the art of chameleon husbandry have recreating the ideal conditions as our primary goal. Determining ideal conditions starts with understanding the wild conditions our chameleon species developed within. But then it must be translated into an execution in our captive environment. Today I talk about how we extract ideal conditions from wild environmental data and what the limitations of doing that are.

Chameleon behavior is a window into what is going on in their lives. It is one of the ways they communicate with us if we have learned the language to hear what they are saying. Today I go over the basics of what behaviors mean. We will talk about the difference between a behavior that is showing an emotional issue and a behavior that is showing a medical condition.

Chameleons have cryptic ways about them. And being mysterious is how they survive. But being cryptic and mysterious also hides illness and that is what we chameleon keepers want to know about right away! Today I talk about the subtle first behavioral warning signs of illness in chameleons.

Good morning Chameleon Wranglers! Today we are continuing our conversation about chameleon cage type. Today we talk with Dr. Chris Anderson who shares his experiences in a wide range of conditions and why selecting glass sides enclosures was right for him.

Deciding on a cage type for your chameleon can be confusing. You hear that chameleons have to be in screen cages but you have all these advanced users using hybrid or even glass cages. Today I am talking with Jonathan Hill of iPardalis about why he chose to use hybrid caging for his breeding program.

The reptile community needs to be strong. And to accomplish that we need to be strong in our smaller communities. Whether chameleon, bearded dragon, green tree python, tarantula, or dart frog or all the others we need to maintain a strong specialized community while, at the same time, realizing we are part of a larger national and still larger global community. Today I am going to talk about what it takes for us to make our specialized communities strong.

Summer is approaching and it is time to take advantage of natural sunlight for your chameleons. Today we will talk about take your chameleon outside safely.

What do you do when the chameleon experts contradict each other? You just want to set up your chameleon right the first time. Why can't anyone agree on how to do it? In this episode I talk about how to reconcile different experts saying different things.

Getting your chameleon cage set-up right from the beginning is critical for your success. It starts with getting the right cage, lighting, and hydration equipment. Today I will lay out the shopping list to prepare for a Chameleon.