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NOTE: Please find other gecko species' breeding sheets above.
- Before You Breed Your Gecko....
Before beginning a discussion on breeding, I must ask the following question- Are you prepared to breed your geckos?
That seems fairly obvious otherwise you wouldn't have visited this page. However, there are several points I would like to bring up before going any further
- Do you have the knowledge? Well, hopefully that is why you are here.
I have heard so often, or read on the internet so many times, "I have eggs, what should I do now!". Gaining the knowledge before breeding will benefit you, the new babies, and the parents.
- Are the Parents ready? Geckos generally do not breed during the cooler months of winter. Are you sure you have a pair? Are they healthy? Are they the right size? Is this the right season?
- Do you have the necessary equipment- incubator, scale, etc.?
- Are you prepared for the babies? Do you have the extra time and facility to check and care for the eggs and to house up to 20 babies per female you breed?
- Do you have a home for the babies? Who will take them once they reach sellable size?
- Oh Boy! It's a boy!
The first thing you need to determine is whether you have a male and a female. Do not assume that while you may have purchased two geckos as a pair you actually have a boy and a girl.
Do a check before introducing them together. As I've mentioned in the husbandry section, males do not tolerate each other and will fight with resulting injuries.
It is a straightforward process to determine the sex of an adult gecko.
For sub adults you can use an inexpensive magnifying glass (10X is sufficient). Flip the gecko over on its back.
A male will have a distinguished bulge (hemipenes) just past the vent at the base of the tail.
A male will also show large preformal pores in a row right before the vent (where the tail meets the body).
Females will not show the bulge. The preformal pores, if they show at all will not have dimpling in the center.
- Age Comes Before Beauty
So how old does your gecko need to be to breed. Viper geckos can begin breeding quite early.
However, female leopards should not be bred before they are 12-14 months of age.
Males can be a bit younger. However, if there is a significant size difference in the pair, especially if the male is much larger than the female,
there may be rejection from one or the other. Watch them closely for over aggression.
- The Happy Couple
Ok, you have a male and a female. Now What? Well, there are a few ways to go about this. You can either leave the male in with the female continuously,
you can keep them separate and only introduce them during the breeding season, or you can only introduce them briefly for a few days at a time just to mate.
This is really your choice as to how you wish to keep your geckos.
Due to their smaller size, most viper gecko keepers house a pair or colony in a single enclosure.
If you are keeping more than the pair,
you may have one male to many females and may prefer introducing the male to the female only a couple of days during the breeding season,
perhaps rotating him through the females and then starting over again a couple of times.
Following mating, the female will be able to lay eggs continuously through the entire season without remating with the male.
- The Honeymoon Suite
Following mating, after about 3 to 4 weeks, the female will start to show signs of carrying eggs.
Shortly afterwards, she will start digging and looking for a cooler spot to deposit them.
I usually keep the sand depth less than a half inch so the eggs are more noticeable.
Note that it is extremely important to keep up the feeding schedule, especially after laying her eggs when she becomes hungry again,
and to continue using the vitamin and calcium supplements. You can provide these in a dish that she will lick from.
The female will almost always lay 2 eggs. This will continue about every 2 weeks for up to 10 clutches! After mating, the lay box must be checked daily for eggs.
Once the first batch is found, start checking for additional eggs after about 10 days.
- On your Mark, Get Set....
While you are waiting for those first eggs, there are a few things you can do to prepare. First, get your incubator ready. Don't have one?
A good, inexpensive on is available from Hova-bator can be found on eBay for about 40 dollars. I'm fortunate to live in the
Midwest as I find mine at the local feed store for about $35.
Setup your new incubator BEFORE you get eggs. Set it at the temperature you prefer (see below for temperature ranges) and let it sit. This may take a couple of days to work out.
Also, determine what are you putting the eggs in. You could use margarine or whip cream cups. You could also use deli cups. Some breeders buy/cut holes in their cups, some do not.
Next you will need a medium you will use in the cups to hold the eggs. This material will function to hold moisture in the cup while the eggs incubate.
The preferred products are vermiculite, perlite, and newest on the scene is Hatch Rite (which is similar to Turface).
- Eggs!!!
Your first eggs! Congratulations. Don't get discouraged if they do not hatch out.
Young geckos can initially lay eggs the first few times without producing fertile eggs. Be patient.
Once you find eggs, the next step is to transfer them to be incubated. Since you planned ahead (see previous section) you have everything ready to go.
Prepare the cup by filling it up half way with the medium. Add water until the contents are moist but not wet.
This is a very difficult judgment until you get some experience. If you are using perlite the mixture is 1 part to .6 parts water by weight.
If you choose to use Hatch Rite, their directions are listed on the packaging. Put two indentations in the medium to prepare the eggs to sit half way into the mix.
Now you can collect the eggs and add them to the cup. Gently lift the eggs and keep them from shifting at all.
Some breeders mark the tops of their eggs with a sharpie to make sure the eggs never tip or move. If the eggs do shift momentarily, they can be put back to their original position.
It is important to avoid shifting the eggs because the embryo attaches to one side of the egg and could potentially "drown" if turned.
Place the top on the container and use something to mark the top. I use a small piece of masking tape so I can reuse the container. Record the hatch date, the number of eggs, and the group and species (if you have more than one type of gecko or more than one group).
Now you can put the cup in the incubator. You should have a gauge to monitor both the temperature and humidity in the incubator (details to follow on temp and humidity). Check this on a daily basis.
- My, It's Getting Hot In Here! Temperature and Humidity in your Incubator
Viper gecko eggs should be incubated between 82-86 degrees and will hatch out between 40 and 60 days.
The warmer the incubation temperature the shorter the incubation time.
Humidity is underrated when considering its importance related to temperature requirements in hatching gecko eggs.
It is important to keep the incubation medium slightly moist but not wet. However, it may be more important that the humidity in the cup is kept high as well.
A container of water can be kept in the incubator to raise the humidity. Hova-bators, as an example, have air holes provided on the top of unit.
I prefer to block one of the two to help increase the humidity in the unit.
Monitor the eggs in the incubator. If one egg goes bad, take it out. Infertile eggs usually start to look bad after a week or so by turning brown and developing a fungus growth.
I usually do not remove eggs unless I see the fungus starting to grow then will get it out right away.
Also, if the eggs do not hatch when you expect them to, it doesn't hurt to leave them in the incubator. It is far safer to continue incubating the eggs than to try hatching them manually yourself.
- Finally, Your First Gecko Babies
So you look into the incubators window one morning and there it is. Your first viper baby. Congratulations!
The baby can be kept similarly to the adults- water dish, vitamin dish, gradient heat source, etc. The baby also needs a place to hibe such as broken flower pots and margarine cups.
It is preferable to keep baby vipers on a substrate such as paper towels rather than sand to minimize any risk of impaction.
Young geckos can act a bit skittish when you first transport them to their new enclosure. I prefer to move the cup to the enclosure and slowly tap behind the gecko to motivate it to crawl into their new home.
Handling of very small viper geckos should be minimized.
These babies will eat very small mealworms and fruit flies (wingless type) to start out.
If using fruit flies, monitor the feedings so the flies to not crawl all the way out of the enclosure.
It has been noted that the size of their meals should not exceed the width of their head.
With proper care and feedings, your baby gecko should grow quickly. It should be mature in a little over a year.
- Gecko Genetics
This section will discuss the genetic process in geckos.
next topic- Foods and Nutrition
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Copyright Walter Kern, Supreme Gecko ©2007
All images and text Copyright Supreme Gecko ©2007 unless otherwise noted
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