NZ leos

[kiwi_geckos]

Hi

My name is Jon i am 18 years of age. New Zealand has STRICT laws on importing live animals into NZ and since 1999 all reptiles have been banned for import... Thus as you can guess prices went sky high. We pay $5000 for a green iguana if they are available... rumour has it that there are a pair of monitors going for $20,000... so the breeding industry is massive, so much that most owners of exotic went underground not telling anyone about their chamelions in the closet.
Anyway a big reptile breeder payed $30,000 for a small group of Leopard Geckos (normalls) and breed them, sold them for $1,500 ea... Now that small number of breeders have them they are becoming slightly more available but i mean tiny amounts!!! I have contacted a breeder and I will have 3-5 Females and 1-2 Males in late January... I wont be getting any change from around $5000... so I plan to make my investment back by next year by breeding and selling the babbys for around $900-1000.

However what I really really want to do it breed Morphs... I love the TUG snows and Tangerines... However because i cant import them i have to breed them from the stock that i have... (normals) now how does one do this any tips would be fantastic...

Many Thanks
Jon

 

[Srt14292]

Unfortunately, Unless you have extremely good luck and some unsuspecting hets, you will not create any morphs out of the normals you have, you will keep coming back with normals, linebreed for hypos if wanted maybe, but normals and normals only unless you can get a dominate morph say a mack snow to start with, good base to start with as you can mix the mack into alot of other morphs.

Seeing as bringing a new morph into your collection, may be highly illegal if you have to smuggle it in, Which I know you may want, but if you get caught you really are in the dookie.
I take it if the morph is allready in NZ then The price may be very high for a select morph, even the most common.

Either way good luck with your ventures and post those pictures of hatchlings when you get them.

 

[kiwi_geckos]

so there is no way to back breed until a Morph appears then line breed from that? I was on the understanding that this was how all the Morphs where created due to that none of the Morphs seen today are WC (I could be wrong)
No smuggling is a BIG NONO
Sorry what does HETS mean?

 

[Enigmatic_Reptiles]

Hets means heterozygous- the animal is carrying genetics but is not expressing them. Yes a lot of morphs did come from back breeding and random genetics popping up, however, the odds of you finding a brand new genetic is very slim. You can line breed your own normal (like reduced spotting or body pattern) but like TUG snows and all that cant be produced by anything other than TUG geckos.

If i were you I would either pass on investing so much into them or wait and talk to all the breeders and see if anyone has ANY morph. If you can get a morph then you can have some diversity and ability to create more unique leos.

Good Luck on all that. I know I want some NZ geckos but they cost too much here too. We pay 25 for leos at chain stores but like 2,000 + for a NZ (if you can find one)

 

[BSM]

+ 1 with travis

Post some pics of your geckos

 

[kiwi_geckos]

ah thats a bummer, so i cant line breed. Then how did the Snows pop up then?
We wont have any morphs because even if we did the breeders would be keeping it hush hush to... Protect his/her investment and breed up stocks... I would think they would be around the $5000 mark each if we had them...

Yea NZ geckos are really cool, we can have them for free all we need is a permit... depending on what permit you have depends on the specie you can have... A B C permit... easy to get, however you cant take them from the wild so you have to know a breeder who will give you some as you cant sell them either.

 

[kiwi_geckos]

Also what would be the chance of artificial spawning???

 

[snowgyre]

Artificial spawning? I have no idea what you mean.

You can line breed your geckos to encourage certain traits to be expressed (ie. hypomelanism, pale coloration, lavender), but what other members here are trying to explain that randomly getting any recessive, dominant, or other genetic trait is extremely rare. It's only because we have hundreds of thousands of geckos in the US that we have come across as many phenotypes (color types) as we have, and all of them were discovered by a stroke of luck. Take enigmas for example. They've only been around for a few years!

 

[BSM]

ah thats a bummer, so i cant line breed. Then how did the Snows pop up then?

mack snows popped up randomly and is co dominate. You can line breed for anything but as said above possibly reduce spotting or even more yellow

 

[Enigmatic_Reptiles]

Ya man sorry to burst your bubble but your not going to be able to breed two normals and get raptors or anything like that without implementing those genetics directly