What is day to day work like/time for raising 10 babies or less

ggg111

New Member
Messages
142
Location
Somewhere, geckoland
Hi,

I was wondering what the day to day (every other day? Weekly?) maintenance is for raising less than 10 babies. I would have either a rack with 6 quart bins or most likely 15 quart bins where the females can be together while they are young, which can be swapped with a 28 quart bin when they are much bigger. I have never used bins or a rack before or bred although I have several adult leos. Is it just every other day change paper towel, water and give more mealworms? Once a week clean bin with alcohol? That doesnt seem like ot would take too ling if I didnt have that many geckos and some lived together. I would want to hold them until i can sell them when they are bigger at a show. So what kind of maintenance should i expect and how long does it take? Im guessing 3 through 10 leos is the same amouny of work, and then above 10 it gets much harder? Thank you.
 

Neon Aurora

New Member
Messages
1,376
Location
New Mexico
Hatchlings need to be fed every day. I doubt it would take more than 30 minutes a day for just the maintenance stuff. Cleaning/disinfecting would take a bit longer. I wouldn't say 3-10 is the same amount of work. 10 should technically be about 3x the amount of work as 3 geckos. Hatchlings require more work than adults because they need maintenance every day.

I would recommend not keeping the babies together. It's not uncommon for babies to fight/kill each other and they tend to grow at different rates. I know many people who say they used to do it but stopped because of fights. I tried to do it once and right away one baby bit the other one. It seems like a great way to cause a dropped tail and excess stress on the babies.
 

acpart

Geck-cessories
Staff member
Messages
15,118
Location
Somerville, MA
I do keep clutch mates together. I make changes if one has a deformity or isn't eating well (then that one gets keep separately) or if they grow at different rates, in which case I may mix and match to get pairs of similar sizes. I use divided front-opening enclosures (though I do have a rack for "overflow") and as the geckos get larger, I take out the dividers so the group has the whole cage to roam in. I have rarely had problems with fighting or biting. I think I had one incident in the last 12 years where part of a tail disappeared and one other incident where a 2 week old hatchling squeezed through the barrier and took the tails off a pair of newly hatched.

Aliza
 

PanJaster

Member
Messages
68
Location
Slovakia
For me, it took about an hour to care for 20 baby geckos + 5 adults. Young geckos need to be fed every day, so they will grow fast and will be healthy, usually they will eat less after they reach about 40g. I tried to house some young geckos in pairs and some alone, usually those growing up alone were eating better (so growing faster), but my fastest growing gecko (50g in 150 days) was housed with another one since they hatched.
 

ggg111

New Member
Messages
142
Location
Somewhere, geckoland
Panjaster do you mean an hour per day every day? Or an hour a week? Or an hour each time you cleaned all their cages (some people say every other day or every 3 days)?
 

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