New to breeding

[Nigel&Sarah2010]

Hi to everyone. This year im going to breed Leopard Geckos for the first time. I wish if someone with alot of leos breeding experience to give me some tips. Thanks in advance

 

[Dinosaur!]

Well before you even introduce her to the male you need to know exactly what your doing. ask yourself these things:

- Get and incubator, thermostat, egg containers
- make sure the incubator is holding a steady temperature
- ask yourself if you can afford possibly over 20 leopard geckos
- What sex are you incubating for?
- can you individually house all of those hatchlings until they are old eneough to rehome?
- do you know the parent geckos genetics, so that you can label and sell the babies properly?
- are you prepared to have babies possibly die or be put to sleep?
- are you prepared to pay for surgery if your female becomes egg-bound
- can you afford to take all of the babies to the vet in case they become ill?
- what are you going to do with the babies? keep them, try and sell them?
- if you sell them, where are you going to sell them?
- if your male prolapses during breeding can you go have it fixed?
- are you prepared for your female to possibly die from egg complications?
- have you done enough research?

im not trying to be harsh in any way, but you need to be prepared for everything and more that i have listed. i highly reccomend just enjoying your gecko as a pet for a year or more, so thhat you get a good feel for how to care for them and such. if you still feel the need to breed ( hey that rhymed! ) make sure that you can give a positive answer to every question up there. and before you do anything, read through the breeding, hatchling care, and egg incubation forums on here, and you should find all of the information that you need. also, i reccomend ordering or purchasing some high quality care books, and reading as many care/breeding sheets as you can get your hands on so that you are fully prepared for anything that can happen. i hope that this helps inform you a little bit, and good luck with your geckos . if you have any more specific questions, please ask!

 

[Nigel&Sarah2010]

Thanks for the information and tips
I've had the geckos for over a year so i know the basic care involved however i do need to expand my knowledge on caring for hatchlings. I'll try and find some care sheets which are specific to hatchling care.
The incubator and equipment is working perfectly and i also have a very good reptile vet close by.
I plan on selling them but am also very much willing to keep any ones which remain. (also i do have an idea of what the parent's genetics are but am not 100% certain .... maybe you could help me out with that?)
I have done tons of research but i guess im a bit scared to start the breeding process since its my first time. (its a bit like jumping into a pool on a cold day, i know it will probably be fine but i still hesitate to jump in)


I do have one small question though. Do you think its better to place the female in the male's habitat or vice versa? Cause the female i'm breeding did meet the male once and she was a bit dominant towards him.

Thanks again

 

[Dinosaur!]

the introduction topic! Personally, i just put them both into a completely seperate tub, so that it is "neutral" territory. Leo's are pretty quick about doing... it..... and generally (as long as your female is ovulating) she shouldnt reject him, and it should be done in just a minute or two As for the genetics question, if you can post some pictures of full body backshot, and an eye shot of your geckos, many people on here could probably help you identify them. And then from there you can get input from people on what babies you could get, or you could try entering it in here-->Leopard Gecko Genetics Calculator

i hope this helps you out!

 

[tb144050]

When you are breeding geckos based on appearance, you arent producing "high quality" because they may be tainted with "hidden unwanted hets." It takes some work to testbreed in order to verify the "absense" of unwanted hets. If you sell the babies, be sure to label them as "unknown possible hets" so future owners dont start breeding projects with "mystery genes". No one wants to get to the second year, breed two hatchlings from the first year....and only then find out "how did i get albino genes mixed in here? What else is hiding in the gecko i bought" ?lol

 

[Nigel&Sarah2010]

these are the eye shots the first 2 are female and the third one is the male

 

[Nigel&Sarah2010]

and these are the back shots (sorry i had to post them in separate posts but the photo were too big to fit in one post) the first photo is the male and the other two are females. Is there anyone able to identify the morphs?

 

[Dinosaur!]

the male looks like a SHTCTB (super hypo tangerine carrot tail baldy) to me, and the non-albino female looks like a very pretty normal to me. i am terrible at identifying albinos though, so someone else might be able to help out there...

 

[Nigel&Sarah2010]

the male's morph seems pretty accurate to me. But could the non-albino female be a high yellow? (cause i thought normals had more spotting)
regarding the albino female i was told by the seller that she is an albino tangerine but he's not a professional so im not sure about it

 

[Dinosaur!]

yeah i still have no clue on the albino, but i think that you could safely call the normal girl a high yellow

 

[Nigel&Sarah2010]

Thanks for that mate I'll ask a bit around about my albino girl