DO YOU WANT AN ADVICE OR YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND?
It's all aagain and again.
People come for ADVICE.
They ask: WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Then they receive an advice from an expert who tries to counsel them as safely as possible, then they speculate and compare again.
The problem is:
When you ask for advice, please apply it!
The advice will always be somewhat imprecise, but with certified admins, you can at least be sure they will recommend proven and safe practices to you!
Or TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
SO: answer this: what is supplementation good for?)))
And the answer is simple:
1. We compensate for the difference between natural food (which has everything necessary) and substitute food in captivity - supplementation should cover this difference.
2. We compensate for insufficiency or poor control of some physiological processes - such as the metabolism of calcium and phosphorus, vitamin D3. Since we do not know if the chameleon, for example, receives enough UVB from a UV lamp and thus produces enough vitamin D3 on its own, we prefer to supplement it to ensure that it has "enough" - thus ensuring a safe level of certain metabolic processes and their products.
So: if you live in Yemen in Ibb and have Yemen Chameleons in your yard, you don't need to give them any supplementation.
When you feed commercially grown crickets as cheaply as possible, reared on the cheapest dog food (which many amateur breeders do), then you need to supplement as we recommend.
When you raise crickets like Mr. Lintner (where the crickets are like in cotton with a substrate consisting of fragrant hay and herbs and flowers) or keep them outside part of the year, you can stay somewhere in the middle.
Let's realize, however, that we are not working with machines but with biological material, and it can behave unpredictably. First and foremost, we have no way to measure the levels of individual substances in the blood and other bodily fluids of chameleons or the UV dose, because it is not technically and financially feasible - so we have to rely on experimentation, the opinions of experienced professionals, and potentially ethically experiment and fine-tune what we do. Additionally, it's great that we are part of a huge community of chameleon experts and amateur breeders, so we have access to the latest knowledge. It is important to listen to them and effectively implement their insights into our practices.