My breeding results for 2011. Morph Help Please.

[waixingren]

Hi everyone. 2011 was my first time breeding leopard geckos. It was a great project and I had a lot of fun. I started 2011 with 2 geckos and ended it with 11. This is the story of one breeder pair and their children.

I would like some help understanding what can be interpreted about the genetics of the children and the parents based on the pictures. I am considering my options for the coming season and will need to keep some and sell some. I want to have them properly labeled before selling them.

Would you seasoned breeders be able to give me some advice as to which to hold on to and which to sell if you were in a position to choose the most valuable outcomes? Obviously there is no profit in this game for a small breeder but if I can help curb the costs of the hobby I would like to. I am curious as to what kind of prices I could reasonably charge for them.

All the geckos were incubated in a range of 80º-87º(stable within 2º per clutch) and as far as i can tell all 7 children came out female. maybe the youngest are too young to tell but i see no signs of male parts.


Thank you so much if you go through the pictures. I really appreciate the assistance.



To start off with lets look at the parents.


The female. Nell. She is a craigslist gecko. I have no information on her genetics.

The male. Brutus. I bought him from Mike Rekowski at Repticon Orlando. He was labled "Dark Emerine X Patternless Stripe". His eye is different from the any of my other geckos. Looks like an albino eye to me.

First child. Banana. Born August 1st.

Second born and clutch mate to Banana. Noodle. Born August 3rd.

Cheese. Born August 23rd.

Positron. Born September 30th.

Negatron. Clutch mate to Positron. Born September 30th.

Baby 1. Born October 14th

Baby 2. Clutch mate to Baby 1. Born October 14th

 

[Thorgecko707]

Awesome geckOs! Crazy eyes!

 

[RampantReptiles]

Nice pairing! Especially love that male, never seen eyes like that!

Is that everybody?
Of the babies you hatched out I like the second one, the last one and the second to last one (October 14 babies). That is personal preference and some may say different so you need to decide what you like and what you are looking to create.

 

[stager]

Wow you pproduced some nice stuff

 

[acpart]

I'll try to deal with your questions:
The traits in the parents that you have to work with are tangerine color, lack of body spotting and striping. The first two are considered genetically to be polygenetic or "line bred" (meaning that to get the best look, you need to continue to breed the best looking geckos). The jury is out on whether stripe is genetic or not (I think it is).

In general, the traits people seem most interested in are the tangerine (orange) color on the body, the tangerine color on the tail (carrot tail) and the striping. Striping ranges from broken bands in only the body or the tail (called "aberrant"), broken blotchy bands in both the body and the tail (usually called "jungle") and head to tail black stripes (true "stripes"). In the case of your babies, most of the one with broken bands are "aberrant" or "jungle" and maybe you could call the last one "stripe". I would say that the ones that would probably be most likely to sell are the most striped one and the orange ones with no spots. I usually sell the ones with lots of spots for about $25 and the striped and superhypo (no body spots) ones for $30-40.

In thinking about next year, you have to decide what you like and what you want to produce. If you like albinos (neither of these is albino), you could get an albino breeder to make hets and then breed the babies to each other or back to the albino parent to get albinos. If you pair up your geckos to breed for both the albino and the superhypo trait, you'll have "hybinos" (also called "sunglows") which are superhypo albinos. This was my first project.

As I've said in other posts, your best bet is to understand the basic genetic terms (dominant, recessive, co-dominant, linebred) and then to read about different morphs at leopardgeckowiki.com to decide how to build on what you have. The more you work to figure this out on your own, the more rewarding it will be and the more innovative and creative you will be as well.

I did write an article about breeding on a small scale and you can find it here:
http://www.geckotime.com/breeding-leopard-geckos-on-a-small-scale/

Aliza