Breeding one female to several males

[Sandra]

Long time no see! Lately I've been busy and haven't had the time to read though the forums that much. Now I have loads of tabs in my browser with interesting threads to read, argh.

But that's going to change because I've decided to breed my geckos! The problem is that I have a horrible female/male ratio, and I'd prefer to bred one female to several males so I can get some variety.

The only drawbacks I can think of are:

1. In certain cases, you wouldn't be able to tell who the sire is - not like all breeders and costumers care about that. Since I do, I would only breed geckos whose offspring I can tell apart. For example, I plan to breed a female bell albino to a bell albino and a SHTCTB. That way, I can tell that the non-albinos come from the SHTCTB and the albinos come from the Bell.

2. The stress that several copulations could put on the female. Truth to be told, I haven't witnessed matings other than in short videos, I have no clue about how much it does affect the female. But it's not like I'm going to have them mating the whole season. I only plan to allow a maxium of two matings, doesn't seem excessive to me.

If there's any other drawbacks I haven't thought of, I would like to know.

Now I need some input about how to do it. I thought of introducing one male, wait for the first clutch, let her recover a bit and then introduce the second male. Would it be better to introduce the second male just after the first male, before egg laying occurs? She would be less tired I guess, but I want to give her some time to recover from the bite marks and stress of the first copulation.

Help, help

 

[mynewturtle]

Hi Sandy,

I don't think you could do this, I haven't heard of it happening but I don't think. If it can happen I would introduce the new male every 3 clutches. I haven't heard of this happening so I'm not positive.

 

[acpart]

I suppose it could be done. I have had the same female bred to 2 different males, once because nothing was happening with the first male (not much happened with the second but I did get a few) and once because the original male died. She is not a good breeder and was very limited in how many babies she produced. I don't think the gecko will care. I just read somewhere (probably on this forum, but not sure) that if a female is bred to an additional male it may take 1 clutch for the transition to happen. It would be pretty interesting if you got a clutch where each egg was fertilized by a different male (like with kittens). I would say go for it, or consider getting another female and rotating them different years.

Aliza

 

[Sandra]

I'm assuming it could be done, I haven't ever heard you couldn't. But it's not something people do everyday and there's very little info.

I guess after the first clutch would be better than the third, simply because the female will not be as exhausted. What would be your reason to introduce the male after the third clutch, Kaleb? (just curious).

I have several females, but not as many as one would like to have see some variety in the offspring. If it doesn't harm the female in any way, I think I will go for it, even if the results are not as good as if I used just one male. Now I'm curious

 

[Stitch]

A lot of people have the male and female mate multiple times to make sure all eggs laid are fertilized. I do this with my pairings. So if you have her mate a second time she's not going to care if it's the same male or not. Now she might not let him mate with her just because she doesn't want him to (this has happened to me with the same male). But that has nothing to do with it being another male.

Simply put, it will not hurt her. Plus I think the scenario you stated above would be a neat experiment to see how mother nature works.

I say: GO FOR IT! :main_thumbsup:

 

[godzillizard]

Females are capable of retaining sperm from even a single mating for about a year. So you'd need to wait until next season to switch males...

 

[Sandra]

Females are capable of retaining sperm from even a single mating for about a year. So you'd need to wait until next season to switch males...

But that would be only if I wanted to make sure that the sperm doesn't mix. In this case, I don't see why would I care about the female retaining sperm from two different males. It's not like if she retains some of one male, she cannot retain from any other males... At least I think so.

I'll share the results if I go for it. The females I want to breed twice are still quite young so it will take a while. Maybe we'll be able to learn something interesting from it.

 

[Stevie]

This is exactly what my Msc-thesis is all about. My research is on sperm competition with leopardgeckos. When I have my results, I'll let you know!

Greets,

Stevie