Gecko Daddy Leopard Gecko Articles / Breeding Leopard Geckos

We had kept reptiles for years. We had bred a few and had been able to sell everything we produced. It seemed like a no-brainer to turn our hobby into a real business. You know, with a name, a logo, some cards, and contact info. We thought we understood the nature of an online business. We studied other reptile related web sites and we thought, “We’re going to the next level!” So, one glorious afternoon we convinced our wives that this was a business opportunity. This is the article they wish we would have understood clearly before taking our reptile...

To create a bold black and white leopard gecko, we knew we had to start with two of our favorite morphs—the TUG Snow and the Halloween Mask. The TUG Snow is a great snow line with a lot of white in the head and body. We have found this snow line to be a fun line to work with because it doesn’t have a super form and you can line breed for patterns. We like the hypo-snow version, as well as those with lots of spotting. The second morph that we have come to love over the years is the...

We previously introduced the basics of leopard gecko genetics in our article “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 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,...

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? 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 why a...

One of the fun things about having a leopard 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...