Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a leopard gecko who has always bren small. Her clutchmate is full grown and has laid eggs already, but this one is still only 7" long and 35 grams. She is healthy, has a fat tail and all her proportions look normal, she is just small, much smaller than my other gex, and I am beginning to doubt she will get any bigger.

I think the LGM says normal is 7-10 inches, so I guess she's just within normal range, I just don't have any others this small. Does anyone else have a small full grown gecko? If so, have you bred it and were there any problems?

Starling I do have a smaller than normal female like your speaking of. She has some nice lavender bands that I was trying to improve on so I did breed her. No ill affects at all and I didn't notice smaller than normal hatchlings or anything. She has a plump tail and weighs right at 40 grams. But she is noticably smaller than my other girls. I think that if a leopard like her has some color or other trait your looking to work with then go ahead and breed her. Who says you can't have a gorgeous smaller framed lizard? Just my two cents! Oh yeah and I want to get one of your gorgeous albinos Starling. Let me know.

I was talking to Nicole from KN Reptiles at a show some time last year and she told me about some "dwarf" geckos she has/had.

She said that everytime she tried to breed them they ended up becoming egg bound.

I'm not sure exactly how small Nicole's dwarfs are/were, but egg binding could be a definite possibility.
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-Ross Payan - www.LeosAnonymous.com

Leos Anonymous

Red Striped Tangerines, Carrot Tails and Screaming Amel Fat-Tails

Thanks Ross

Do you know how big the "dwarf" leopard geckos were? Did they have odd proportions, like with human dwarfism? This girl looks perfectly proprtioned, she's just on the smallest edge of the normal range.

I haven't bred her, she's only 35 grams, which looks like a pretty healthy weight on her. At 7" I don't know that she'd count as an actual dwarf, but at that size to get to the min breeding weight I like to use (45 grams minimum, preferably 50-60) I think I'd have to get her almost obese. Maybe with a 7" gecko 40 grams would be okay. She has very nice oranges, so I'd like to breed her if I can without detriment to her health.

Like I mentioned before Starling I have bred one of these females like your talking about. Never had a problem with her eggs or anything. I will take a pic of her to show you later on today.

She's a tang albino, and has nice oranges, so yeah if I can do it safely I'd like to breed her

I've already hatched out 3 TA's this season, more in the incubator, and I haven't even bred most of the TA girls from last year yet (still plumping them up). Email me.

I have one girl who is about 6 3/4 inches...but she's two years old. She's a tank tho...fat and a huge tail. She probably weighs a good 45 grams on that small frame... She did breed when she was younger due to a mistake on my part. She kept her first clutch for about a month and a half before she laid the eggs. After that she layed every month. She's developing eggs again. =/
She hasn't been bred again yet.

As for my other leos...one is a baby I hatched about 2 weeks ago. She came from the biggest egg in my incubator! But she's half the size of the albino I hatched two nights ago. O_O!

Another I hatched last year, she's 10 months old and probably only around 5 and 1/2 inches long...I need to find a ruler... She's still a little scrawny, and her siblings really outgrew her, but she's my little girl. I don't think I'll ever breed her...unless she hits some ~huge~ growth spurt in the next year O_o

I would think if they're smaller than that 6 and 1/2 inches there's too much of a risk. If they're still on that kinda end rate (like yours) as long as they're fat there shouldn't be too much of a problem if they're over a year. I'd say 2 years to be safe at least.

But I'm still a beginner at this tho. Hopefully someone more experienced will shed some more light on this?

At 7" she is a little bigger than yours, maybe if I can get her really fat...she's only 35 grams now.