Getting first geckos.

[Mattmar42]

Next weekend is repticon charlotte and I plan on purchasing some geckos(Most likely). I've been eyeing cresteds and gargs, as well as leachies for a while now, and I'm really thinking of going with a crested.

I currently have four beardies, and two chameleons. I would love to breed them, and I'm wondering how the living arrangements for them would go, I'm planning on using 10g longs turned onto there sides(sliding doors) and or rubbermaid tubs.
I've thoroughly read the care sheets and what not, and just had some basic questions about breeding.

Should I keep them together in the same enclosure 9 months out of the year? Or just for a small amount of time and then seperate them?
What would ideal breeding groups be, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, etc.

Any suggestions on what to pick up? I'm looking to get at least 1 male and 2 females, should I specifically go for the same colors/patterns? I'm very new at this, and much more familliar with BD morphs. I think Dalmations and Moonglows are so cool.

Thanks!

 

[acpart]

I'm not much of a definitive voice: I only have 1 crestie and am hoping to breed gargs this spring. I do know that a vertical 10 gallon is a minimal size for 1 and you'd need something bigger for multiple geckos. My leopard geckos do well together in breeding colonies for most of the year and I haven't heard much about aggression in cresties, so, until someone more experienced disagrees with me, I'd think it's OK to keep them together.

Aliza

 

[darkridder]

I do not suggest keeping males and females housed together full time unless youre willing to go with a rather large tank, and be willing to monitor your females and males weight closely. But one thing to remember with reptiles, they are not social, both would be much happier if kept individually. When breeding you only need to introduce them for a few days then separate them. And this new pair of yours I would keep separated until spring, for one if they are from different breeders they need to be QT'ed for 60 days, but also if she was bred last season she needs time off. Actually if she was bred last season to any male other than the one you picked out it may be in her best interest to give her next season off, these guys can retain sperm for 2 seasons, so although you may place her with the new male, there is nothing saying the babies she produces couldnt be from the other male. Also when picking them up, if she is a prove breeder, as how many season she has bred for back to back, if it was 2 seasons you will want to give her time off also to recoup.

A 10 gallon on its side or kept normally really is the min for a single adult, I personally prefer 15 gallons for a single adult.

For a breeding pair my suggest....be willing to spend a good amount. A good breeding pair will easily run you $300-400 dependent on several things. Good quality females tend to start at $200, great females will run you $300+. But that doesnt mean spend alot on her and skimp on the male, he is more important in the long run. And a nice male can run as much as a nice female, and a great male just as much also. You want to look at not only color and morph, but look and the crest structure, yes that gecko may be blazing red but is it bald? Remember these are crested geckos and shouldnt be bald. And realize their downfalls, so if the female is beautiful but meh in the crests, it means make sure her male has a great crest structure to hopefully balance her lack in crests. And know what you want to breed for, mixed pots are not always the way to go for it. Average crested geckos are easy to come by, have a goal to produce better then that, so if you like reds, get 2 reds, if you like blondes try and get 2 blondes. If your goal is to make a red pinstripe get a red and a pinstripe. However if your goal is just to make geckos....I highly suggest dont start yet until you figure out what you want, dont jump in head first.

My suggestion to anyone who breeds these....they are very easy to breed, prolific and you are up against a HUGE market, many great breeders large and small out there that you are going up against. So although they are cute, you need to realize what you may think is cute, others may not. So like I said have a goal in mind for a morph and color, dont just mix geckos together. Take it slow, a single female can produce alot, 2 females can be over whelming for a first time breeder. Consider having space to raise all the babies up to nearly adults, like I said this is a hard market to sell cresteds right now as everyone is trying to breed them so take into consideration you may have another 12 geckos you need to have cages for. And selling online can be hard, if all youre producing is $50 or less geckos most people do not purchase these online as shipping will run as much as the gecko does, another reason to try and aim for higher end stock.

And most importantly before actually breeding, here are a few reads I suggest anyone who is actually serious about breeding them actually read, one of them is really long, but again if youre serious you will read it.
http://www.pangeareptile.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32241&highlight=supply+demand
http://www.pangeareptile.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58456&highlight=selling
http://www.pangeareptile.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55956

The last really gives you an idea on peoples opinions on crest structure in what they are looking for.

And not trying to talk you out of it, just food for thought.

 

[Mattmar42]

Thank you for your post, this gives me a lot to think about. I probably shouldn't have left this out, but I actually plan on going to school for zoology. I'm very intrigued by the whole breeding process and absolutely love caring for and managing the herps I currently have (4 beardies, 2 chams). I'm considering not breeding my beardies just because of the steep market.. and selling cluthes of 20-30 is even harder than 2! But I have taken my time and collected some fairly decent dragons if I say so myself. I would honestly like to put away at least a little money from all the offspring I sell, be it whatever species, and get into something a little more advanced, leachie, caimen lizard, etc. I do find cresties extremely awesome however, and have been doing a ton of research. I'm hoping I can find some pretty solid ones for a fair price at the expo to try my hand.

Edit: I was already planning on housing them seperate having seen a lot of people recommend it, I figured that's how it would be(Like with breeding chams and beardies). I was thinking 30 gallon rubbermaids, and using a racking system, is this too big? And if I drilled a lot of holes, say.. 10-15 to a side around the top ledge, would there be a reason not to stack the tubs?

Thanks again. Extremely insightful post.

 

[darkridder]

wll tell you, being a biology major myself, going to school just for zoology can be very limiting, and you can ask a good friend of mine that. Simply finding a job looking for someone with a zoology degree is slim, most zoos look for biology, be animal behaviorlist over just zoologist, and many schools do not offer zoology as a degree. Your work scope will be very narrow. Biology is a larger branch, and depending on your school you can focus in on different areas of biology like vert, invert, botony, or humans. So before you make the jump, really consider other things.

But thigs brings me to another point...which young people tend to get mad at me for lol. One thing to consider when breeding is your age. Many people will not buy from minors, they have no protection when they have disputes. Now I am not saying you are going to scam people, but it is a thought in everyones mind with new breeders as there are a lot of shady people who breed. I know if you head over to the crested gecko community you will find if you took a poll many of us will not buy from minors including myself. It isnt to be mean, like I said it is just harder to dispute and do things lawfully when working with a minor. So that may be something you want to consider, if your 17 thats pretty close nobody may notice your age, however if youre younger you may get alot of downfall from it not only online, but locally also you may find reptile educated people may shy away from buying from you. But again if youre serious, do your research on not only the species, but breeding, and learn the ins and outs, and invest in quality geckos, it wont be as hard because take Derek Dunlap, he was a minor when he started, however he dove in head first with a large background in reptile keeping, did everything right, can answer any question thrown at him, and invested in high end animals.

Personally I keep varied setups. My males are in aquariums, acrylic zilla cages, my females are in tanks, tubs, exo terras, and my babies are all housed in tubs, kritter keepers, and a few small exos. So I am a miced pot. Your female would be fine in a 20 gallon tub but if you want to use a 30 that is fine also. I personally dont do hole, I find I personally dont get enough air flow and I have cut out holes that are about 7" x 7" on the fronts and hot glued acrylic screening to it. This still keeps the humidity at a good level without it staying too high and things molding. It also makes misting them easier as I dont have to open the lid to spray them down. You can easily stack tubs, I dont for my larger ones as they are on a rack, my babies are double stacked on their rack because there is room for it.

I also wanted to add, which may be a better route for you, is to buy younger. Since these will be your first cresteds, try buying older juvies or younger adults. It will give you the chance to fine tune your care on them. But it will also give you the chance to decide if this species is right for you. Believe it or not I have had people say before I just dont think crested geckos are my thing after owning them for 6 months to a year. So before jumping head first into an older pair and breeding in the spring right away, by going a little younger it will give you time to make a for sure informed decision on if they are right for you. But also, which is another great reason is price. Obviously the younger the gecko the less it costs (usually). Instead of spending $400 on an adult pair, to which you may get a breeder lying about age, or how often the female is bred, you could be getting a burnt out female, or a female who needs a season off and the breeder isnt telling you this as they want the sale. Personally I dont buy proven females from small breeders unless they are friends I can trust their word on it. But this way if you get a younger gecko you could find a $200 young female that when fully mature is a $300+ gecko, the same with a male you could find a $100 male that would be a $200+ male as an adult. So if you can scale back the itch to breed a little bit, you an invest in higher quality animals over buying these two adults over here because thats all the money you had to invest and couldnt afford the higher quality animals. This honestly is how most breeders go about it, they buy younger animals and raise them up, breed them, hold back the great ones and add those into their breeding lines because when you are producing stellar animals, there is less and less reason to have to continue always buying adults from other people, you can cross your own lines with one another (granted on several variants). And it can take awhile before that really happen. Sometimes some geckos appear to be great matches and for some reason it just doesnt work out and you get odd balls. Which oddballs can be great in their own right, but if your goal is to produce cream on cream and your pair is producing stardard harleys....time to retune the group.

So when you go next weekend ask the hatch date, if your buying proven breeders like I said ask when she was last bred and how many seasons in a row she was bred, what was her last male like. Ask how far back the color goes, this is important on things like reds, the farther back the red goes the stronger the odds are you will produce reds because like I said oddballs happen, I had 2 blondes produce a red before, everything they produced was blonde or yellow and black, and just the one red so occasionally you do get randoms in there. Ask what the breeder feeds, if it is baby food, or anything mixed with baby food just walk away and look for breeders who are feeding CGD. And like I said pay close attention to the crests, yellow the morph and color are equally as important, but like I said you want to produce crested geckos, not baldy geckos

 

[Mattmar42]

I'm actually 18, I started school a year late as a kid, so being homeschooled I'll actually be graduating 6 months or so earlier than I would have been in school. I can breeze through tons of work in a day, and still have constant surveilance of all my animals. It works out great.


I can completely understand the kid thing, and I'm not exactly sure about how I would go about selling. I have what I guess you could call a mentor, who's a very experienced tortoise breeder, who will help/teach me to ship, etc. Kind of got me into this whole thing.

Looking at the market on a lot of websites, some of the prices can be very low if the geckos (at least what it seems like to me), aren't just outstanding. Mostly 50$ and below, which *If* I sell them would be great. I honestly would love to at least make back what it costs to feed them, and i'll be happy.

Really eyeing things like leachies and gargs, the offspring rate will obviously be slower, but I'd in most cases make a little bit of money I would think.

And with zoology, I plan on majoring in biology in community college before I go to a university, I've tracked down all the schools that offer it as a major, and I'd like to pursue it to a doctorate, but I'm still young and it's likely I'll change my mind, ecology seems pretty awesome as well.

Thanks a ton for your posts, they've been really helpful. I think in the end I'll either spend all of the money i've put aside for this on a nice breeding pair, or a pair of unrelated juvies, Or save my money and look at another venue.

 

[darkridder]

I LOVED ecology, my instructor was a nut about it so the exams were killer, but the subject itself is awesome.

The garg market is really slowly down also which is why I decided I probably wont breed mine, I have actually been trying to sell them and I cant even manage to get my 2 egg laying virgin females to sell. The people who do well at it are ones who are breeding reds and oranges and selling their kids for $200-$300 a pop. Those people who are breeding just your normal black and whites, grey and white and brown and whites are having a round time selling them more and more as like cresteds, they are meeting their flat point. Leachies are still doing fairly well but people are very particular about them, they want to know exact lineage, pure lines. They also take alot longer to mature as a female needs to be around 3-4 years of age before breeding. Females also are very temperamental during breeding and can be egg aggressive. Gargs not so much, and in general handle a lot better than leachies. I used to want one until I really dug deep into their personalities and realized they are the grump rhac's and the most bitey ones. Not really interested in getting bit by a giant gecko to be honest and if I am, it will be from a Tokay lol. Chewies are getting more popular but like leachies, people want to know the exact lineage, pure lines, and again usually 3 years old when sexually mature. They also cost quite abit of money, and take a long time to mature. I got lucky and got my PI for $250, the guy just needed the money badly. But it isnt uncommon to see an unsexed PI baby to go for $350-600, and unsexed ML's go for $300-$450 (they are smaller and less colorful most times making them a bit less popular than the PI's). An adult can easily go for $1200-$1800 for a PI depending on color and sex, and sometimes even more than that. And chewies are so soft, slow, and I personally think the easiest to handle out of the popular rhac species. So if your looking for something outside of a crested and have the fundage, consider chewies also, but you rarely see sexed pairs for sale.

Rhacs are alot of fun, prolific, even gargs are prolific their offspring production is about that of cresteds, leachies and chewies are much less prolific which is also part of the reason they demand a higher price. The wonderful thing is youre not restricted to just buying at the show.

If you go there and dont see what you like, but get an idea for what youre really looking for, this is a good thing. DONT SETTLE! Just because this is a chance for you to get some, dont limit yourself. It took me 8 months just to find a nice red male that I liked as I was not settling for a red male with bad crests. It is better to buy pass and save a few extra bucks for something you really want over what is available at the moment. And the great thing is that youre not terribly far from a great breeder. So if you dont find exactly what you want, let me know I would be happy to point you in the direction of great breeders to help you find what youre looking for.

 

[Mattmar42]

Hmm, I definitely think rhacs are really cool, and would loooove a leachie. I actually just really like geckos in general, but the idea of a giant gecko seems awesome. I'll just have to wait and see.