Bunnies, Budgies, and Big Ideas: March 2012

I'm not sure why we go weeks without posting, then in two days we all do a new post, but that's just the way it is. So here goes my new post:

Leopard Gecko Breeding!

Here's my leopard gecko, Anthony!

Now before I explain the steps, and the do's and don't's I would like to explain why I'm writing this post in the first place. This weekend my male leopard gecko and a friend of mine's female gecko are going to be bred. And, if we are lucky we'll have babies in July!

Alright, I think I'll do a step-by-step.

1. Make sure you pair of geckos includes a boy and a girl. Now, you can have one boy to more than one girl but for right now we're just going to say that it's one of each. It's unbelievable how many people think they have a female when in fact they have a male. If you would like to know how to determine the gender of your gecko, look in you leopard gecko handbook.

2. After assessing that you have a male and a female wait until mating season. Generally mating season is March through August. If it is already mating season then you can now put your male gecko into your female gecko's habitat. If you put the female into your male's he may be too territorial to mate.

3. Now you're probably wondering how long to leave your male in the female's tank? For starters, I am explaining a process that the male doesn't live with the female all year round, if that's your case, you're in the wrong place and should stop reading this post now. :)
Anyway, back to the topic: I would say three days is the minimum amount of time. However, during those three days you need to do two things: 1 you need to make sure they aren't fighting too much. The process of mating includes some pretty harsh fighting, but if they seem to be fighting 24-7 I'd say you should remove them from each other. And 2 you need to keep removing and replacing them. I'd say leave them together for an hour or two, then remove the male for three or four hours (or over night) and repeat this process over and over until you have either seen them mate, have given up, or have hoped that they have mated.

4. Depending on the age of your female you'll get a different amount of eggs. If she's about 4-6 (they shouldn't be too much younger than that, I'd say 2-3 is the absolute youngest I'd breed a female) they will lay anywhere between 6 and 15 eggs. If they are older than 6 they'll lay less, between 4-8. This is important to know for two reasons. First reason, you'll need to be prepared for all those babies! And second, you will need to re-mate your geckos every 2 or 3 clutches. (A clutch is a pair of eggs, geckos lay their eggs in pairs, so therefore four clutches would be eight eggs and so on...)

I think rather than making this post as long as a book I'll wait to post about all the egg details and such. I believe that as the process happens in real life (with my male and friend's female) I'll explain the rest of the steps of getting your own baby leopard geckos.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, I would love to explain the rest to you personally if you are interested, and don't want to wait for them to show up on here.

As always,
~Moira J

Obviously, no one has posted in a long time-- we were just blown away by Emma's amazing post that we didn't think we could compete.

................................OK, yeah, not really. We just didn't post.

Anyway, Cocoa just recently discovered a new favorite toy (and no, it's not toilet paper!). Emma picked out a "Cuz Ball" for him; a.k.a. a 'feety ball' (or maybe that's just us O_o). Either way, he absolutely loves the thing! He carries it around and chases it and chews the feet. Most are just balls with these little clown feet on the bottom but his has little stubs for feet, no shoes. And it has eyes. At least it doesn't creep him out. Without further ado, here are some pictures of him enjoying his ball. By the way, if you're looking for a toy for a pet, this one is great! It's really the only toy he likes besides bones.