starting a new line/ morph questions

[strhunter2]

so I'm curious how does one start an entirely new line, like you always hear about tug and other company's that have their own line of X morph. if you wanted to start your own brand new line would you start with 2 wild caught and see what you get or 2 captive bred normal's or just pick an already existing morph and see what come out

Ive tried looking online but i haven't been able to find much on starting a whole new line

Thanks

 

[KDesautels08]

so I'm curious how does one start an entirely new line, like you always hear about tug and other company's that have their own line of X morph. if you wanted to start your own brand new line would you start with 2 wild caught and see what you get or 2 captive bred normal's or just pick an already existing morph and see what come out

Ive tried looking online but i haven't been able to find much on starting a whole new line

Thanks

Most "lines" of geckos, are simply descendants of line breeding. For example, a lot of the tangerine lines are a result of line breeding (aka breeding two tangerines together, then taking the nicest hatchlings raising them up and breeding them)... It is very rare that something entirely new comes along by accident..

 

[acpart]

In my opinion, this is what you would do:
--find a gecko with a trait you're interested in reproducing. This could be a color, pattern on body or head, contrast, unusual colored spot, or anything else. You have to be sure the trait isn't something that comes with that gecko from a previously established morph.
--breed that gecko with another, preferably one that shows some signs of that trait
--find the offspring that demonstrate that trait the best and breed them to each other, or back to the parent with the strong trait
--continue to refine by breeding geckos with the trait together with some judicious outcrossing to make sure you're not breeding close relatives for many generations
You would have a "new line" once you can get fairly consistent results from your colony of geckos with this trait.

As you can probably see, the difficulties are:
--finding a gecko with a specific trait that hasn't already been appropriated by someone else
--having the time and space to breed a lot of geckos and to sell the ones that don't "make the cut" for that trait.

Aliza