New to this, few questions

[pkruiner]

I'm planning to start breeding leopard geckos most likely early next year, but I am a planner by nature so I'm gathering as much information as I can now. I just have a few basic questions that someone can hopefully answer for me.

I basically plan to do a very low scale project with 1 male and 2-3 females so I won't really be churning out babies, I just enjoy the animals and think the whole process is very interesting (bio student talking). I also like the appeal of maybe doing a few shows and making some money off it.

I'd like to know what morph people would recommend as a good introduction to the whole thing. I think it would be unwise to shell out for enigmas as my first project, but I do want to cover the expenses. I've been reading about different morphs and it seems like albinos give better immediate results. With such a small project, I don't see myself line breeding and getting that into it in the beginning, so I'd like to use the math to my advantage.

I also plan on purchasing the herpetoculture book by Tremper to read more into the subject, but any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

[acpart]

I agree it's a great idea to plan ahead and start small. I started 3 years ago with an albino male, albino female and SHTCT female with the idea of making my own hybinos. Since the SHTCT female turned out to be a very poor producer, it has taken me until this year to succeed, but they are worth it. A good and productive first project, in my opinion, is to work with a dominant/recessive trait like blizzard, albino or patternless. If you breed a pure recessive to a non-recessive, as you know probably, in the first generation you would get hets which would not express the trait. A hidden advantage to this is that you could sell the babies pretty cheaply and begin to make your reputation on healthy, strong geckos, rather than breed something expensive and have people who don't know you by reputation reluctant to pay top dollar. In the next year, if you breed the het offspring back to the pure recessive parent, or het siblings to each other, you'll get a percentage of pure recessives. It's really fun to see what pops out of the egg with recessives.

Aliza

 

[pkruiner]

I decided the morphs I'd like to work with are mack snows/super snows. The setup im aiming for is 2 females (1 mack snow, 1 super snow) with a super snow male. If my theorycrafting is correct, out of 4 hypothetical eggs, 3 will be super snow and 1 will be mack snow. Let me know if I'm on the right page or if anyone has any other input I'm glad to hear it.