looking to start breeding crested geckos

[tweak]

I'm trying to get started breeding crested geckos. Any advice or information would be much appreciated

 

[Dog Shrink]

Advice... read read read. Spend a LOT of time in the crested breeding forums. Make sure you educate before you breed so there aren't any surpises.

Also welcome to the forum.

 

[ketz]

Also, unless you're breeding them just to keep, you're going to want to sell them. As with any other business maybe come up with a plan that will help you sell them. Finding venues and shows and stuff is a pretty time consuming thing sometimes. Also consider that most breeders have a website, logo, business cards, stuff like that.

 

[sfreptiles]

my adivice would be, yes read as many care sheets as you can, but try to hit as many gecko forums as you can, IMO I think that they are a lot more helpful, you can actually talk to people who have had experience.
Also, be careful, cresteds are very prolific. Even tho you may only throw the male in once, she can produce many times over from that breeding. Make sure you have space and a market for babies if you want to sell them

 

[Daedric1]

Also, be careful, cresteds are very prolific. Even tho you may only throw the male in once, she can produce many times over from that breeding. Make sure you have space and a market for babies if you want to sell them

Exactly. One successful breeding can easily net you 12 eggs - sometimes as many as 18. Be prepared to house a lot of geckos if you can't sell some or all of them. This can get expensive and very time consuming to take care of all the little ones properly.

As others have said, the best thing you can do for now is read, read, and read. You should spend at least a couple weeks reading before even buying one just for the point of having it as a pet, and probably twice that if you're going to breed.

I'd also suggest that you should try owning one for awhile before breeding, so you can understand the care required firsthand. You might want to raise a few younger geckos to adulthood before breeding rather than buying some adults, so you're ready to deal with the quirks of hatchlings, which are quite different than adults. I say this because I met a married couple at a show who tried breeding with adults they purchased, but could never get the hatchlings to live past a few months old. Obviously, they didn't have experience with young cresties and so their whole project failed.

Best of luck.

 

[tweak]

yeah I've started accumulating juveniles, I've already been raising two and I plan on getting a few more from the upcoming swap, possibly 2 adults as well. As far as research goes I will continue to read as much as I can. Thanks

 

[T-ReXx]

One additional tip: start with a SMALL group of the highest quality animals you can afford. The crestie market is pretty flooded and supply way outweighs demand. In order to compete as a new breeder, you should focus on producing small numbers of high end animals. Start with a pair or trio and grow slowly from there. All that CGD for larger collections gets expensive, trust me I know, haha.

 

[tweak]

does anyone know of any good breeders in the chicagoland area?