Six Unit Nursery Cage System

For serious breeders, there is no debate that raising your babies up individually is the best method of ensuring your babies grow up to their full potential.  Individual raising eliminates the detrimental effects of bullying and competition from older or more aggressive siblings.  Each baby has its own food, water, basking area, and resting spots.

The Dragon Strand Nursery Cage System gives you this opportunity to create a professional level breeding program whether you are a commercial breeder or a serious hobbyist.

 

Space Efficiency.   The Dragon Strand Nursery Cage System was designed to fit on a standard 48” wide, 18” deep wire shelving rack easily found at club stores, home improvement stores, or on the internet.  It was also designed to fit six babies under one 48” fluorescent fixture.  A standard six foot tall, 48” wire shelving rack can hold three rows of Nursery Cage Systems.  This translates out to individually housing 18 babies in four feet of wall space under three 48” fixtures.

 

Ultimate monitoring of health.  With each baby separate you are able to individually monitor their health.  You will know how much they eat, how healthy they look, how often they defecate, and how healthy the waste appears.  This system will allow you to raise your babies up past the critical beginning months in the top health that their genetics will allow.  You will be able to offer the highest grade animals to your customers or continued breeding program.

Each cage comes with an optional service door screen block. This can be used if you elect to have a soil floor or do not want the ventilation that the screen service door provides.

The Dragon Strand Nursery Cage System is designed to fit in the standard 48″ wide x 18″ deep wire shelving units. Two of the Three Unit Nursery Cage Systems will fit side by side on one 48″ shelf making six cages per shelf.

Each cage has a removable floor panel.  While spot cleaning may be done on a weekly basis, a removable floor panel allows easy deep cleaning.

Strong clamp latches ensure secure closure.

Each system of three cages contains a common drainage tray to collect waste water an ensure it is kept physically separate from the cage inhabitants. This avoids the unhygienic bacterial breeding ground mix of poop, escaped feeders, and water.

The Nursery Cage System is a result of decades of experimentation with raising chameleon babies individually. This, of course, is not only about keeping chameleons separately, but also allowing you to effectively set-up and maintain your chameleons for the necessary time.

System Functions:

1. Competition free space. Offer hatchling chameleons a single occupancy cage that is large enough for them to stay in until three to four months old which is usually the age that panther chameleons are able to be sold and go to a new home.
2. Provide visual isolation. The sides of the nursery cage system are opaque so that neighbors cannot visually bother each other. Chameleons are visual animals and can communicate/intimidate from adjacent cages if allowed.
3. Allow external drainage. A fitted drainage tray that fits all three cages is included in the cage bundle. The cage itself is not water tight and this allows any water, mist, or moisture to seep out of the cage and into the drainage tray. It is critical for chameleon health that water not be allowed to sit inside the cage. The mix of poop, water, and escaped feeder insects makes for an unhygienic system. You will see water in the tray below and this water can be removed either by allowing it to evaporate or sucked out with a wet/dry vacuum (not included). The cages and drainage tray are separate pieces and can be cleaned independently.
4. Individual cages for individual maintenance. When a chameleon leaves the cage and it must be cleaned the ideal situation is that you can take that one cage and clean it without disrupting the entire set-up. Each single cage is easy to bring out and put back in.
5. Flip-up Service door and pull out floor. The cage design has an acrylic main door with a 4″ screen service door beneath it. The screen door allows ventilation for air flow and flips up so you can maintain the floor of the cage with minimal disturbance of the chameleon inside. The floor panel slides out for easy cleaning.
6. Bioactive substrate option. The Nursery Cage System has a screen flip-up service door which can provide ventilation for the lower part of the cage. Alternatively, a screen block is included if you desire to create a substrate floor. The Nursery Cages can accommodate a 4″ deep substrate level. Since the bottom is designed to drain into the drainage tray a drainage layer of hydroballs is not necessary. If you desire even more drainage, you may drill holes into the PVC cage floor. (do NOT drill holes into the drainage tray!)