How to Start Breeding Leopard Geckos
By: Uno Birawan
Speaking about lizards, you may find that the leopard gecko is one of the geckos that you can easily breed while in captivity. Their beautiful and unique patterns plus their obvious appearances that are very interchangeable through breeding made the leopard gecko most admired compared to other geckos. Breeding among geckos will create new specimens with more unique patterns, which makes the job of a breeder very exciting.
By: Uno Birawan
How do we start a breeding process? First, you have to make sure that your male and female geckos are sexually mature. But before that, you should know how to distinguish the male and female. It is pretty easy.
You just turn over the gecko to see the under side. Male geckos possess two pronounced hemipenal swellings behind the stomach just on the tail part. A male gecko also possesses a V-shape pre-anal pores which lies just above the stomach and between the back legs.
Unlike the male, the female does not possess those hemipenal swellings, but they posses what is called pre-anal pits instead of the enlarged pores. You must be aware when mating a fat female gecko, since she may also show a sort of swelling that resemble the hemipenal swelling of a male. It is actually fat.
The requirement for an adult gecko to breed is that it should be of the right age and is in a healthy condition. The right age of a male gecko is not less than 8 months, and has a weight not less than 45 grams. While for the female, it should not be less than 1 year of old with a minimum weight of 50 grams.
Actual act of breeding, which is the mating, is quite easy to manage. You can just put the gecko pair in the same enclosure and they will immediately mate, but it could also need some time for them to take action. In this case it is good to leave them together for a few days. Time will proof that after being placed together, the male may get aggressive and start to chase the female.
The first move of the male is usually biting the female. And if the female bites back it means that she is not interested yet. It looks like a fight, but this is a normal mating behavior of the leopard geckos. Another gesture of the male is shaking the tip of his tail very fast, back and forth, which sometimes can be very loud.
If the pair failed to mate after kept together for those few days, it is best to separate them for a while and try to mate them again after 2 - 3 days. Usually they will succeed and then you should observe the female. Breeders should prepare a suitable container for the female egg-laying. A humid hide which is filled with moist will do well.
After about 4 weeks of mating, the female gecko will start to lay eggs. The first clutch usually consists of 1 - 2 white oval eggs. Geckos are able to lay about 8 clutches per year, where there is an interval of 2 - 4 weeks between two laying.
The laid eggs should be removed and kept in an incubator. It is the temperature of the incubator that determines the sex of the gecko babies. Set at a low temperature of about 80 degrees it is most likely that the clutch will be females.
On the contrary, a higher temperature of about 90 degrees, it is most likely that the clutch will be male. A temperature of in between, 85 degrees, will eventually generate a mixed sex of both males and females.
Uno Birawan is a Leopard Gecko enthusiast and wrote a lot about caring for leopard geckos. His observation on gecko care is that about 86.5% of geckos have the chance to die within 2 years of captivity. You can obtain more information on how to properly take care of a gecko and how to save it's life at http://leopardgeckocenter.blogspot.com. Lets make your gecko healthy and live longer.
Article Source: EzineArticles.com - How to Start Breeding Leopard Geckos
