male breeding weight??

[skunk]

i have an enigma bell i wanna pair with one of my females, all my females just hit 50 grams but he is about 40 grams and he is over a year old. is it still to early to pair him with one of my females????

 

[eyelids]

Both are too small by my standards, but a lot of people breed geckos around that size...

 

[Retribution Reptiles]

Not all geckos are created equal. So having a male which typically grow faster and reach sexual maturity at a younger age only be 40g at over a year old, I don't forsee him getting much bigger then that. I would say he's fine to breed. The female's if they start to ovulate at 50g and they appear to be in good health then I don't see an issue.

All geckos are different and some breed smaller while others will grow to 80g's. It's all genetically dispositioned for their size.

 

[eyelids]

Thanks for adding that... I wanted to, but the words didn't come to me so eloquently...

On the contrary, I have a male [100+ grams] that never got above 45 grams for nearly two years... We moved him to a different rack and he coincidentally began growing at a rapid rate... Literally doubling his size in three months!

Tiger

P.s. He's my only gecko that eats ONLY mealworms... :wall:

 

[TokayKeeper]

Also keep in mind, about 5-7 years ago a 70 gram leopard gecko was considered huge. 40-60 grams was on par, with once ideal weight of females for breeding being 45-50 grams. Over the years of lurking and being on hiatus I've noticed geckos getting bigger, and particularly fatter. An observation in junction with this was feeding of mealies. I've been a diehard cricket feeder, but do maintain a mealie colony for situations that don't allow for me to get crickets...like the recent virus that went about. I do offer supers leading up to and during the breeding season. Some will argue it, but I oddly find it much easier to properly gutload crickets over mealies, be they regulars or supers. FWIW, last time I possessed a functioning digital scale 2 of my male normals (Golden-Eye and Triton within my profile) were at 60-70g and were solely raised on crickets. I only started offering superworms to my geckos in 2000. Golden-eye and Triton are CB '96 and '97 respectively.