I have a male leopard gecko and want to get a female. What morphs are affordable?
I’d like to start with some on the low end and then work up to making some high-dollar geckos. I’ve bred ball pythons and had 2 lockup 4 times and still no eggs almost a year later so I’d like to try leopard geckos while waiting for my snakes to breed again.
1 Like
Did you have a particular budget in mind?
Honestly I would recommend avoiding raptors for now since I’ve seen too many outcrossed being listed under them and not being a great representation of the combo. Mostly being the patternless or red eye parts of the acronym.
I think that’s something you can work towards later on though as you get to learn the ropes with Leo’s though.
I still would consider albino. Pick a line and stick to it. Or just make sure not to cross them. None of the albinos are compatible so you would end up with a mess of double hets.
You can start with a small and easy project like high yellow albinos (hybinos) or a simple double recessive like albino blizzard or albino Murphy’s patternless.
After you get your toes wet and do a bit of research into things, that’s where you could start looking into things like line breeding tangs and such. Those also tend to be the ones where a good one will be the expensive ones and well worth the price of you do it right.
Enigma is a bit similar to the wobble genes in ball pythons. Not every enigma gecko will show signs but when they do it’s a bit worse than the pythons it seems.
Lemon frosts were found to have a problem with pigmentation causing cancer, so that is also another gene to avoid
As always though …
Words of advice are that Leo’s are possibly more oversaturated than ball pythons. It can be hard to move low end stuff.
And sometimes it’s best to just find something you want to breed and work towards that and not necessarily what we suggest as well. So if you think you do wanna try raptors for example … I wish you the best!
1 Like
Leos are like corn snakes in that they are generally cheaper than many other reptile species, and are very difficult to make any money on. So I would find something you like and work with that. Make sure you have a way to sell the offspring before you breed anything. Low-end leos are generally most easily sold wholesale.
If you want to breed the male you have, make sure you are 100% certain of his genetics when it comes to morphs. Otherwise any offspring produced would be Pet Only quality. Also make sure you understand morph genetics enough that you will be able to accurately identify the morphs and morph genetics of any offspring you produce.
Edit: I agree with @armiyana , avoid Lemon Frost and Enigma. Ethics aside, they are falling out of favor because of their associated major health problems.
2 Likes