Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Today I weighed my leos and my 2 youngest females (approximately 5 months old) weigh 51 and 53 grams each.
Now I've seen a lot of people say that minimum breeding weight is 40 grams, preferably 50, but these leos seem way to small to breed imo.
The female I bred last week weighs 85 grams, and to me she's just big enough... nice pudgy tail and little fat deposits under her arms.

I just wanted to see what everyone thinks of breeding leos that are so small/light.
Maybe I just have some heavy leos
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4.4 Leopard Geckos
1.0 Marbled Gecko
1.1 Red Eared Sliders
0.2 Siamese Mice

I usually wait until my females are about 60 grams. I would rather have them larger and not push them too fast into breeding.

Also I wait for them to reach about 8 months of age before breeding. 5 months is a little young. Remember bigger is better.

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Cody Castellanos
Pro Geckos
cody@progeckos.com

I wasn't planning on breeding those little ones anytime soon, I just found it really wierd that people recommend breeding such tiny leos.
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4.4 Leopard Geckos
1.0 Marbled Gecko
1.1 Red Eared Sliders
0.2 Siamese Mice

If you breed geckos under a year old, I think they should be more like at least 55-65 grams minimum and at least 8 months old...5 months is just too young IMO.

Also weight is relative to adult length, just like weight is relative to height in people. On a gecko that reaches 9-10 inches 55 grams may very well be too light to breed. But some geckos reach a full size of around 7"-8", even after two years or so. 55 grams might be plenty big on them.
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Sarah Stettler aka Starling
Sarah@stargecko.com
StarGecko.Com COMING SOON! Star Quality Leopard Geckos
Specializing in Hypotangerine Tremper Albinos

I find it pretty amazing that a 5 month old gecko can weigh that much! Are you power feeding? Even so, allowing a young female to lay eggs will deplete her body of calcium which she needs to develop her bone mass as she grows. Not only that, breeding too soon can reduce her life span significantly. In my opinion, the ideal age to start breeding a female is around 1-1/2 to 2 years, and an absolute minimum weight of 45 grams.
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Marcia McGuiness
Golden Gate Geckos
www.goldengategeckos.com

I just give them a dish of mealies every 2 days. This is the first time I've weighed them and I just found it hard to believe that an adult female could weigh so little and still be big/healthy enough to breed. My adult females are a lot bigger than these little ones.
I don't really consider these leos to be abnormally big compared to ones I've raised in the past.
Thats where I was going with that post, hopefully people don't think I'm going to breed them so young.
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4.4 Leopard Geckos
1.0 Marbled Gecko
1.1 Red Eared Sliders
0.2 Siamese Mice