| BREEDING This section is on breeding.I HAVE NOT tried breeding because I only have one male leo.The information is from some information I got from other pages.To see them click on the lizard at the left.Now about the breeding.The first thing you need to do is to get your female ready for breeding, this means giving her extra calcium and getting her tail real fat, because females tend to not eat when they are gravid, and they have to live of their fat reserves for about a week. First, start supplementing your geckos every feeding, instead of every other feeding. Then to make sure she's getting what she wants, put in a shallow dish of calcium powder in her cage so she can lick it whenever she wants. Now you have to give her a fat tail, do this by giving her a diet high in fat and protein. You can mix in meal worms with crickets, or you can give her a small pinkie mouse! But if you give her mouse, she probably won't eat for a week. Wax-worms can be substituded for the mealworms because they too are high in protein and fat, two things which are essential for fatting up anything. After you have a fat leopard gecko, now is the time to breed them, but this one has more planning to it. First, you should have cooled down your gecko's during the winter. And the temperature should be getting higher, and the days longer. Now is the time to introduce the male to the female. The best thing I heard of was that if you put the male in with the female, and there is no immediate response, leave him in for another 4-5 days. Then take him out, wait about a week to 2 weeks, then reintroduce them. Okay, now after mating, the female will become gravid with 2 eggs, younger and older females will usually lay 1. 3 eggs is extremely rare, and should not be expected. I read that the best way to know if your gecko is gravid is not to look for the eggs is to look for change in behavior. The female will stop eating , and start messing with her encolsure. When I mean mess with, I mean she will dig in her substrate, move stuff around, and never seem to sleep. Now is the time to put in a nest box.The eggs should be laid 10 to 20 days after conception or when the female is impregnanted. You want your leopard gecko to have a large tail, but you dont want her to be fat.That sometimes causes her to become weak, especially while gravid.For the winter season, it is not essential to cool things down. Heres a way to make a simple incubator: Take a 10 gallon tank and fill it with about 2 in. of warm water. then put a heater in to keep it warm. then take a plastic shoe box, NOT A CARDBOARD ONE!!! and fill it with moist, not wet, substrate or vermaculate. cover the eggs halfway into the vermiculate.Put the lid on (make sure it has some holes in it). you should check the temp of the water and spray the vermiculate every once in a while. Now that the eggs are laid, now is the time to incubate them. Eggs that are infetile, will dent in, mold, and start to smelll weird. Fertile eggs will stay nice and white, not mold or get dents. But if fertile eggs start to grow mold, don't worry, there are two ways to get rid of this. First, make a solution of 90% water and 10% bleach, take the eggs and give them a quick dip in it. The mold should go away in a few hours. Then sprinkle just a dab of anti-athletes foot powder on and around the eggs. This should prevent it from coming back. If mold come's back again and again, and you get rid of it again and again, they are probably infertile. If dents start to appear, raise the humidity, good eggs will take in the moisture, and those dent will fill in. The eggs should hatch 6 to 10 weeks after being laid. I would like to thank Kck94ever for the information on the incubator and for the "fattening up" info.Thank you. Got Tips on breeding or incubating? send them here. |
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