Greetings from South Africa

[SA Chameleons]

A quick note of introduction: I am originally from the UK but left in 1988 to work in Asia, where I lived and travelled extensively until my company moved my family and I to South Africa in 1997. Here I was fortunate to continue the travelling and wandered around much of the Dark Continent, allegedly selling banking software but also looking for chameleons and butterflies.

In 2003 we bought a 250 acre game farm where we enjoy the company of our own giraffe, wildebeest, impala, nyala, kudu, blesbok and others. The farm is a haven for smaller animals such as jackal, caracal and I have found over 13 species of praying mantis so far. There are also black mamba, boomslang, puff adders common in the veld and we have had to evict an overly friendly Mozambique Spitting cobra from the living room.

We actually live in Johannesburg, about 50 miles from the farm, where I run a chameleon breeding business, supplying the pet shops with a variety of species, such as Veiled, Panther and Carpet – all captive bred. Up until a few years ago there was very little available in South Africa and knowledge of chameleons was hard to come by, with many succumbing to MBD (which is still a problem). You may be surprised to learn that here we envy the ease with which you can obtain different species of chameleon. Locally, we are not allowed to keep any of the indigenous species and anything else coming in is subject to permits, which are hard to come by.

I have set up a web site to help provide the information needed to keep the chameleons healthy in SA and next week sees the launch of a new book about chameleon keeping written by me in South Africa.

If you are feeling jealous, that is entirely understandable. If not, let’s try a bit harder…I write articles for various magazines and am currently finishing one of Nile crocodiles. Needing photographs of wild crocs simply required a drive of 1 hour to our farm, not from which is a large river that has a healthy croc population. It took just under an hour to find a 6 foot specimen sitting on the river bank to snap. The downside is that on that very spot another croc had attacked and eaten a local fisherman 12 months earlier. Not a problem on the River Arun in Sussex…?

Spring is now here and the wildlife is out in numbers. Soon the night will be filled with the cries of jackal and frogs calling to each other – that is on the farm. In Johannesburg, it is actually quieter and quite relaxing!

David
www.sa-chameleons.com

[gypsy-666]

hoe gaan dit?

[SA Chameleons]

Ek's goed dankie, en met jou? It's a public holiday here today and the smell of braai is in the air.

[gypsy-666]

ek is lekker dankie, its miserable here and they don't know how to have a good braai here in england and they call it a BBQ

[t-bo]

Welcome to the forums David!

[Patmufc]

[derek n]

Welcome to the forum

[Danny_mcr]

to the forums

[batman]

Hi me and my wife lived in sa for a while, holidayed there last year with a veiw to return to live.
Welcome to the forum
bats (aka lee )

[**starry11**]