Breeding

Now, first things first - are you sure you want to breed your leopard gecko? You need to ask yourself:

  • Do you have a market for the offspring once they have been produced? Leopard Geckos can be very prolific. If you don't have a place to sell them, be prepared to house, feed, and clean many geckos.
  • Do you have adequate food supplies and caging for the offspring? A typical Leopard Gecko will produce between 8 and 12 pairs of eggs each season, resulting in as many as two dozen offspring. That's a lot of baby geckos, all needing their own cages.
  • Only breed healthy geckos!! Breeding your Leopard Gecko is not without risks. Dystocia, or egg-binding can occur and poses serious health risks that may require extensive veterinary services. Egg production can be draining for the females, so special care needs to be taken (making sure they have access to OSTEO-FORM produced by Vet-A-Mix or Miner-All vitamin supplement at all times), and making sure that she remains healthy and of good weight. And don't forget to make sure your male is staying healthy as well!

    • If you still want to breed your geckos, read on!! There are certainly a lot of great things about breeding leopard geckos.

    Leopard geckos are sexually mature at approximately 10 months of age, though weight is more important than age. We recommend waiting until both males and females are approximately 50 grams prior to breeding. They will usually lay their first pairs of eggs of the season from January to August. First-time females or older females will sometimes only lay a single egg.

    Leopard gecko eggs are about an inch long and feel dry and firm. Small particles of peat moss will adhere to the surface; this is normal. Eggs which feel very soft or are wet to the touch are most likely infertile; don't discard them, as they may be fertile. Sometimes the females will lay eggs in their water dish; again, the eggs are usually infertile, but incubate them just incase. Another issue that can happen is that the two eggs will sometimes stick together - don't try to pry them apart, as you might damage one or both of them. Just incubate them together.

    Leopard gecko eggs are temperature sex dependent, which means that the sex of the gecko is not determined at fertilization, but is set during the first three weeks during incubation by the temperature you expose the eggs to. A temperature that does not exceed 82 F will give you mostly female offspring. If you want to hatch mostly males, then you'll need to incubate at a temperature of 88 F during the first three weeks of incubation. For a mix of both, 84-86 F will give you just that!!

    Place the eggs in a plastic container (16 oz deli cup or a plastic shoebox works nicely, either with only one or two small holes in either end) with either Vermiculite or Perlite (1:.8 mixture of perlite/vermiculite to water). Bury the eggs approximately 1/2" in the mixture. You can buy a commercial incubator if you are after a particular sex, or you can just place the container of eggs on a high shelf in your home where the temperature ranges from 74-94 F. The baby geckos will hatch in 6-9 weeks, depending on the temperature they were incubated at (the higher the temp, the sooner they hatch.)

    Hatchling leopard geckos begin taking small crickets or small mealworms 3-4 days after hatching. They don't need to eat before this; they will eat their first shed and finish absorbing the egg yolk during this time. Plastic shoeboxes with holes in the sides are ideal homes for babies. We use margerine tubs with a hole cut out on the side and a wet paper towel underneath for a moist hide. A Gatorade cap serves as a place for vitamin-mineral powder, another Gatorade sized cap for water, and a peanut butter jar lid works perfectly for the mealworms. We recommend keeping the hatchlings separate, as there will always be one or two babies that outgrow everyone else. Once this starts, it is a matter of time before the smaller gecko will be injured or eaten.