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In two weeks, on August 7th and 8th, we will be vending at the Reptile Super Show in Pamona California. We are way excited about the show. We have hundreds of geckos we will be bringing—leos of all sorts, fatties, smooth and rough knobbies, and of course we will have several cresties. Show information can be found at the Reptile Super Show web page. If you are one of our fans, please come by and let us know and we’ll give you 10% off your purchase. Look for a follow up post about our experience! Brian read more

Leopard Gecko Genetics—Part 2

We previously introduced the basics of leopard gecko genetics in our post “Leopard Gecko Genetics—Part 1.” This follow-up post will introduce the concept of a double recessive—an animal that displays two recessive traits. It’s time to dust off those biology cobwebs again! In our previous post we mentioned that the genotype is the alleles of a certain characteristic. For example we would write a genotype as YyZz. The phenotype is the way the animal appears. Though the genotype shows a het y and a het z trait, we actually see the Y and the Z. As you begin breeding leopard… read more

Sexing Leopard Geckos

Knowing what the sex of your leopard gecko is can be extremely important. Without knowing if you have a boy or a girl, how would you even know what to name your gecko, right? Not to mention that if Sasha turns out to be a boy, then he and Zanzibar are going to have a rough go of it—males don’t like other males! Then there is that mental shift you have to make when you believe that Phil is a boy until you realize that he is really Phyllis and you never quite feel the same about him—uh, her. So,… read more

Leopard Gecko Genetics—Part 1

Have you ever felt like you needed to be a geneticist in order to figure out the difference between one leopard gecko morph and another? Have you ever wondered why one leopard gecko may cost three times as much as another when they look virtually the same? Do you have great plans to create a new leopard gecko morph that has never been seen before? We do! Leopard gecko breeding often requires a basic, and in some cases advanced, understanding of genetics. Good thing we all paid attention in our biology classes, right? When we understand genetics, we not only understand… read more

Favorite Pics 2010 Vol. 1

Takin' pics of geckos is fun! Here are some of the good ones fom this year. This is the male sunglow holdback from last years group. We haven't named him yet, but blazin' hot is what we should call him. He is stellar! The baby next to him is one from this year that is also AMAZING. Should be a male as well. Here are two of the HM R2 Bolds we produced this year. We aren't sure what to do with these yet. They are real lookers. This could be a pair for next year. This is a fun pic… read more

It’s a gecko evolution!

It’s fun to watch the evolution of a gecko. The change can often be extreme. That’s one reason why we hold our animals back for so long before we sell them—it’s nice to see what you’ve got. Some geckos start out looking like they are going to be great and end up being pretty normal. Others look pretty normal and then… kapow! It’s gecko evolution! The changes can start to show pretty quickly—like the patterns on the snows and the bolds. The snows can start to get some spotting right after the first shed. The bolds often go through… read more

The Rise of Skeletor

So, we hatched out this odd looking gecko a few weeks ago. We posted pics on our facebook page, so you may have seen him there. He was a total surprise. We found his egg, along with that of his clutch mate, hidden in the moss of our HMR2 and Emerine pair. We had pulled eggs out of the hide that had vermiculite on several other occasions, but we never checked the moss for eggs. We happened to find the eggs nestled in the damp moss and one of the eggs was huge—I mean HUGE. So we put it in… read more

Clutch Mates—“Are we related?”

One of the fun things about having a gecko farm is checking the ‘bator for hatchies. You never know what you are going to find. Actually, we have a good idea because we keep records and we watch hatch times and we have “due dates” marked on a calendar. But at any rate, you still never know “what” you are going to find. It’s almost like Christmas morning, or maybe Easter. In the case of some of our geckos it’s like Halloween—they are Halloween Masks you know. So, geckos lay eggs in pairs and those eggs generally hatch within a… read more

Halloween in January!

We started some Halloween Mask projects this year and are very excited about the quick start we’ve had with these guys. This is our stud HMxR2, Boulder, and our beautiful pure HM female, Eras. Check out those head patterns! They look like someone poured ink all over them! So far we have two clutches from these two, and we have a few other gals mixed in with Boulder who have thrown a clutch or two, so bring on the Halloween Masks! This second group is equally exciting. We found this nice HMxR2 male, who we call Garamond and he has… read more

First Eggs of 2010

Hooray! We found our first eggs on January 2nd. They came from one of our WC fat tails who we call “Red” because of the reddish pigmentation she has (almost like rust). It’s good to see the fatties taking off so quick this year. Last year they were slow, but we have 6 or more gravid females and a few leos digging as well, so here’s to a great year of production! read more

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