Like all other chameleons, melleri require live prey. This includes insects, isopods, and very rarely, small vertebrates. Adult melleri develop omnivorous behavior in the wild and in captivity, relishing some fruits and dark green vegetables. A good feeding regimen utilizes a good gutload, wild prey, and a balance of soft and hard chitinous prey in each meal. A balance of chitinous and soft prey is vital for digestive movement and can't be bad for the teeth and gums. A diet of strictly soft prey (larvae and soft-bodied flying insects) does nothing to abrade and thereby clean the teeth (think of dental doggie treats).

Prey for juvenile melleri:

Soft

Flightless or clipped houseflies
Small silkworms, no longer than the side of the juvenile’s jaw
Standard mealworms
Waxworms
Butterworms (Sweetworms, Trevo larvae)
Small moths

Small crickets and mantids
Isopods (commonly called wood lice, roly-polies, pill bugs, sow bugs)
Pygmy locusts
Leafhoppers

Subadults eat live insect prey of suitable size (equal to length of mouth, viewed from the side), such as small crickets, young roaches, and moth larvae. Subadults will consume approximately 6 to 20 individual bugs per day, fluctuating with growth spurts. Growing hatchlings should be fed liberally.

WARNINGS: never offer food items that are too large for the lizard to eat and never offer insects collected from areas where there have been insecticide and fertilizer treatments. Young melleri can and will try to eat artificial plants, leading to intestinal blockages and death.

Prey for adult melleri:

Large silkworms
Captive-gutloaded giant hornworms (not off the tomato or tobacco plant, these are full of toxic levels of Vitamin A)
Fat earthworms (nightcrawlers; have a good calcium:phosphorus ratio)
Large moths and non-toxic butterflies (preferably captive-hatched, to protect your local pollinator populations)
Several species of large fly

Various roach species
Large, gravid female crickets
Large (1” and up) locusts (grasshoppers)
Adult mantids
Walking sticks
Isopods
Large katydids (be careful, they bite)
Superworms
Red Giant Mealworms
Japanese green beetles
June bugs (also called potato bugs & waterbugs, but these are misnomers)

Acceptable Vertebrates

Clean, farm-raised non-toxic frogs
Finch hatchlings (no sharp claws)
Small, clean, farm-raised lizards

Vertebrates should only be a rare treat, if used at all, as they would be rare in the wild treetops of Africa. Offer no more than once a month. Despite rumors, it is possible for captive melleri to breed successfully without consuming vertebrates.

Vegetation

Curly Mustard Greens
turnip greens
dandelion greens
collard greens (some melleri do not like these)
Sliced or whole strawberries (allow to bite, not to shoot, whole ones)
Quartered seedless grapes
small bites of ripe banana or mango

Acclimated adults maintain healthy weights when fed 1-2 large prey items once or twice daily or every other day (for a daily total of 2 to 4 large bugs). Adult melleri will also eat 1-3 two-to-four-inch long pieces of greens a day.

Going for the greens. / photo K. Francis

Melleri relish fresh greens. / photo K. Francis

New imports should be offered as much prey as they will eat. Gravid females and growing youngsters should be fed liberally.

WARNING: Adult melleri can and will try to eat artificial plants, leading to intestinal blockages and death. Do not house melleri with artificial plants. Offer fresh greens to sate their natural appetite for vegetation.

Food Sources

You can order farmed prey, raise your own, or collect it in the wild. Here are some excellent farm sources:

Live prey must be gutloaded by the keeper. Order replacement bugs before you run out, so you can get them on your gutload for a week and clean them out. Most farmers use potatoes or other cheap gutload that is not good for your chameleon. Prey that is insufficiently gutloaded does not provide the melleri with the bone-building materials needed for skeletal and dental health.

Here is Kristina's own Gutload, which she raised and bred her adults and raised their hatchlings on.

The ADCHAM gutload recipe is also available here.

To catch wild prey, make or buy a fine bird or butterfly net, carry long tweezers (for big biting katydids and angry large mantids), and a clear plastic food container with lid. Sweep the grass with your net for small katydids, locusts, crickets, and leafhoppers. Save yourself time and frustration by hunting at night with a flashlight. Porch and security lights attract tasty treats. Only collect insects in pesticide-free areas that you own or have permission to visit at night. Do not trespass on private property or damage crops to get your bugs. Try not to keep fresh caught prey longer than 30 minutes before freezing. Any later, and the bugs will excrete their gutload under the stress of containment, rendering them useless for feeding. Each bug has a revealing trait for the hunter: katydids sing, grasshoppers have shiny eyes, moths have orange reflective eyes, etc. It’s fun and good nutrition for your pets!

Mustard greens can be grown outdoors year-round, being a winter vegetable. Grow your own or buy from the grocery store, but wash them well, in either case.

Feeding Amounts and Frequencies

There may be more than one way to avoid fatty liver disease (see Health page), but one known method is to prevent excessive food consumption and obesity. The chameleon keeping hobby has adopted the harmful idea of the obese or heavy chameleon as "healthy". Bloated limbs and casque, rolls around the wrists or ankles, edema, and difficulty palpating limbs and ribs are all signs of morbid obesity in chameleons. A hydrated melleri has slightly puffed parietals on its head, but is otherwise svelte in body and limb. Melleri are prone to obesity, as they are eating machines. I used to suggest that owners not hold back any food from new WC melleri. Recently, I had a non-gravid adult WC start to gain excessive weight in the first two months of acclimation. I now have to watch the diets of both CB and WC melleri to avoid obesity. Feeding a WC is a delicate balance and I recommend new owners use a digital gram scale once a week to track their new WC's weight. For melleri in stable condition, I recommend one or two appropriate-sized bugs per day, with a 1 day fast once a week. Breeding females and growing melleri require more feed only at specific times. Young melleri will signal the onset of a growth spurt and need for increased feed (up to 10 appropriate-size items a day for roughly 5-7 days) by showing hyperactivity, climbing cage walls, or even smacking their lips at their keepers. When feed increases, these behaviors should cease overnight, and will not return until the next growth spurt. A breeding female should be kept on a diet as above, until she is gravid. When she becomes gravid, allow her free choice feeding. Since healthy captives routinely get deparasitized, they don't have a load of "bugs" cutting into their caloric intake. One way to help satisfy your melleri's instinct to consume constantly is to introduce supplemental vegetation to the diet.

Increasing climbing space will also help your melleri exercise more, burn calories, and it will take more time to chase down and consume prey. The longer it takes, the more thinking and work your melleri does for each morsel, the healthier it will be physically and emotionally. This comes closer to duplicating hunting in the wild.

Methods of Food Delivery

Bowl feeding is useful for new wild-caught melleri. It minimizes the contact they have with humans, at least until they settle in. Sterilize plastic bowls in the dishwasher and take care to remove dead bugs and feces (melleri poop in their food bowls) every day. Chameleons get lazy with a bowl and will perch very close to avoid strenuous long-distance shooting.

Hand-feeding is good for taming your wild-caught melleri as it begins to settle. It is also fun interaction and lets you count exactly how much prey is consumed. You can challenge your lazy chameleon to shoot to its maximum length (about the length of the body or more), and help it exercise its tongue. Avoid direct eye contact when hand-feeding, and start out by hiding your face out of the chameleon’s sight, behind some leaves. Wash your hands thoroughly before handling prey and feeding; wash after to remove sticky tongue residue and oral bacteria.

Hunting loose prey in the cage is exciting for your chameleon but it has its dangers. Insects can chew through fiberglass screen and escape. They also get down in the bottom of the cage, bringing a hunting chameleon in contact with any feces on the floor of the cage. The bugs can also eat the feces and transmit parasites.

Fresh Frozen Wild Prey

For those with access to clean fields for collecting wild prey, the collecting season is short but prolific. There is a method for making the most of this season and providing your melleri with wild tastes during the winter months. This method works each year for one keeper, but due to unpredictable misuse by others and conditions of individuals’ wild prey collection areas, we cannot take responsibility for any ill effects. Use common sense and proper food handling techniques.

1. Capture large numbers of moths, locusts, mantids, and katydids by flashlight at night, and immediately freeze them in bags. You must work fast to get them frozen before they defecate their excellent natural gutloads. Treat them as if they are raw chicken. Wash your hands and kitchen surfaces before and after handling them.
2. After they are frozen, it is a good idea to lay them out in paper towels and roll them to reduce frost clumping, then place rolls in bags in freezer.
3. To use, unroll only as many needed for the feeding. (If more than one feeding session per day, only defrost as much as needed for that individual feeding time.)
4. Place in sterile plastic or glass bowl.
5. Pour hot water into bowl.
6. Wait 2-5 minutes for defrosting. Pat dry with clean paper towel for best tongue grip.
7. Feed out to chameleon(s) immediately, by twitching the bug in your fingers. Some chams will shoot them on sight, no “puppeteering” needed. Do not feed out defrosted prey that has been sitting for more than ten minutes. Again: treat as if raw chicken.

Chameleons relish variety in their diet. This method gives the keeper a no-maintenance source of variety all winter, and it helps perk up “bored” chameleons.

Manmade Mineral and Vitamin Supplementation

If a balanced gutload (a nutritious feed for prey insects) is being used, over-supplementation of mineral dust and vitamin liquids can cause deadly edema (swelling on throat or chest) in chameleons. It is better to properly feed all prey, then supplement only as the lizard's growth or reproductive condition require. Up until the first year of age, young melleri can be supplemented with calcium dusting on prey, two days a week. Gravid females can be supplemented with dusting once a week, and daily drops of Neocalglucon the last week of gestation. Calcium is required for making egg yolks and shells, and is needed by the muscles involved in labor contractions. Without enough calcium, the female’s bones will become brittle and the contractions will be weak and lead to dystocia (eggbinding).Melleri in general are sensitive to prepared supplementation. Stop all supplement use when edema appears, or if ataxia or seizures occur.Halt the progress of edema by exposing the chameleon to long hours of natural unfiltered sunlight, good hydration, and switch to undusted prey fed a nutritious gutload. Edema takes months to reduce; it is a signal of irreparable and accumulative kidney damage. Renal failure has no cure, so avoid it by providing a quality prey gutload and minimal supplementation.