What would you do?

[Svashtar]

One of the little geckos I hatched was born missing one of his front feet, and the toes on his other front foot are malformed.

I do plan to keep him and make sure he stays happy and healthy. He's gimpy, as you would expect, but he gets around without too much trouble as far as I can tell. He eats well, and has a fighting attitude. Apart from the missing foot and weird toes, he isn't much different from the other babies.

If you hatched out a deformed gecko, what would you do? Do you keep it? Do you "cull" it? Do you find it a good home? I'm curious about what other people think.

For the record, this is him:

I call him "Rumblestrips".

 

[katie_]

Hes gorgeous.

I myself would keep it, but you cannot always count on having them forever.
I understand why people would cull something like this, because of the rare chance it may be bred.
Its a tough decision.
If you found it a good home, you would have to be 105% confident it would ever be bred.

 

[EnchantmentGecko]

I would keep it personally but that's just me. The only way I would give it to anyone would be if they were a close friend and you knew for a fact they'd never breed him.

 

[leoguy62]

Tough decision, me personaly probably wouldnt be able to keep it since my parents wouldnt let me but if iwas aloud to i probably would

 

[acpart]

As you may see from searching the forums, this has been a hot topic. I have kept leos with deformities before as long as they can eat, shed and poop with minimal assistance. At the moment I have a young hatchling with one malformed leg and I'm waiting to see whether she can survive.

Aliza

 

[Svashtar]

I don't even plan on breeding Rumblestrips, and will do my best to give him a good quality of life. As long as he's eating, and holding his own, he's okay in my book.

If, for any reason, I cannot keep him, I will find him a home and stress to whoever takes him that breeding him would be Bad.

I actually did a search on deformities here, and it would seem Rumblestrips isn't that bad off by comparison.

Now if only I could get him a little hook and eye patch. . .

 

[Dimidiata]

Out of curiosity, have you done any looking into what may have caused the deformity, such as human/mechanical error or just plain old pain in the ass genetics?

 

[Svashtar]

It could have been incubation heat, since my home got a bit on the hot side for about a week. But it wouldn't explain his siblings, who were incubating with him and turned out fine. It's probably just bad luck on his part.

 

[acpart]

I have found an occasional foot and eye deformity crop up in the 30-50 leopard geckos I produce each year. I think it's the luck of the draw. They occur across all the pairings and not in batches, which would, in my mind, rule out genetics or incubation problems.

Aliza