Reptile & Amphibian Forums

if you were to invest in leo's as a breeding project which would you buy as a starting point

It really depends on how much you want to make, and how much you want to invest on it. Buying 1.3 giant carrot head carrot tail jungle albinos would probably be a good investment... in time. If you ever get some of those screamers like dan has you can make some good money. But of course you need a lot more than 1.3 screamers to make a living (if thats what you plan on doing). Or if you just want to breed geckos for fun and get a little side cash then most people go with all different kinds of tangs, ex: super hypos, hypos, baldies, SHTCT, etc. But it all depends on what morphs you like and what you want to breed.

first thanks for the reply, i really like the tangs, and i dont want to do it for a living i just want to support my habbit, lol side cash would be nice help pay for the hobby, i want to have nice leos people would want,

I'm curious, why does almost everyone that owns geckos want to breed them? Is it a money thing? Or maybe it's a fun thing to watch? I just don't get it, there's not really a shortage of leos. Everytime I go to ANY pet store, there's at least 10 of them. Maybe not all the babies survive so they have to be breed more than other animals? I've owned many different reptiles and amphibians over the past 20 years (most of those years were raising my now 15 yr old iggy), and I've never heard of any other animal being breed so much as the gecko population. Especially leos. I just ask, because recently I bought a tang, and have already had 3 offers from other people to lend me their male leos to breed with her. I only bought her to be a pet (a kind of expensive pet), and I've always thought the tang leos were the prettiest. I'm not trying to bash anyone, I just was wondering if there was something that I was missing.
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~*Chibi*~
Sir Iggy ( 1.0.0 El Salvador Blue Iguana), Ryo-ohki, Orion, Bud, & Finnegan (3.1.0 crazy kitties), Rosebud (0.1.0 cockerspaniel), and Kayko (0.0.1 leopard gecko)

its not for money..thats for sure, you cant start breeding leos..then quit your day job, or else you'd be living out on the street....even the bigger guys who breed the thousand dollar moprhs have more than one job..breeding geckos cannot pay the bills

there might not be a shortage of leos..but there is still much more to be done with them, there are still hundreds of new morphs that may be produced, its the excitement you get when working with projects like this, you dont know what going to come out, and no matter how many babies you've hatched over the say..30 years you've been doing this, you still get excited whenever an egg hatches..

its also because they are so easy to breed, they are one of the absolute easiest reptiles to breed and people are starting to catch on

i think once you get like...12 leos you'll want to breed them..i would probably put money on that
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Dan Quinn
Manhattan Herps

and wanted to breed with four. Course you can never have too many. I like the excitement and the sense of accomplishment with watching something you love grow and have babies of its own. So I will only have 12 when my eggies start hatching!
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1.0 Blizzard Bill
1.0 Hypo stripe, Het Rainwater from JL (BJ)
1.0 HypoTang from Crested (Apricot)
1.0 Tremper Albino (Cloud)
0.2 Hi-Yellow Leopard gecko (Beatrice, Pepper, Goldie-now w/SD)
0.1 Normal (Freckles)
0.1 SHCT Leopard Gecko (Brite)
0.1 Tangy Mutt Leopard Gecko (Rainbow)
0.1 Tremper Albino (Leucy)
RIP Peaches, Ghost
3 eggs a-cookin'

my guess would be because it's a breeding process that's interesting, but the market's not so glutted (like with cats & dogs) to the point where it's outright immoral to be breeding. my personal motivation came from having my favorite morph (snows) be in very short supply when i first started up. i think there's plenty of normal leos around, but i feel like there's enough demand for snows that i'm comfortable that they'll find homes. most people don't think about the market and morality dynamic, though, it's mostly because breeding and selling offsets the cost of keeping (and that's significant, if you are obsessed and have a lot of leos).
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marla
currently: 0.0.9 catfish, 0.1 ferrets, 2.8.3 leopard geckoes, 0.0.13 oriental fire-bellied toads, and 0.2.0 sugar gliders

not naive, i want to breed them because i have taught my nephew how to raise meal worms supr worms, clean cages why we clean, build incubators and he can tell you anyhting you want to know at his age about a pupa larva and beetle, with geckos we will what them lay eggs hatch and learn, it to me is excellent quality time, and if we can make a coupoe dollars to fund or hobby cool, to me its a sense of committment and accomplishment i just got into herps in the last year and it is the best stress relief i have found, thats my reason

I guess that all makes sense. I've just never come across any other animal that seems to be breed so much. I didn't really take into consideration all of the different morphs. I just got into leopard geckos this past year, even though 15 yrs ago, I had planned to get one. I walked out of the petstore with a hatchling iguana instead, who is now 15yrs old and a very big baby. But after seeing all the different leo morphs there are, I would like to eventually get one of each kind, but I probably won't want to do any breeding. I used to raise ducks, and it used to be so heartbreaking when the eggs wouldn't hatch, or the baby ducks wouldn't make it past a few days old. I'm assuming leos are way more difficult than ducks are too.
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~*Chibi*~
Sir Iggy ( 1.0.0 El Salvador Blue Iguana), Ryo-ohki, Orion, Bud, & Finnegan (3.1.0 crazy kitties), Rosebud (0.1.0 cockerspaniel), and Kayko (0.0.1 leopard gecko)

at this point, blazing blizzards all the way, since there don't seem to be any more homozygous mack snows around, and hets would involve too much inbreeding (IMO).
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marla
currently: 0.0.9 catfish, 0.1 ferrets, 2.8.3 leopard geckoes, 0.0.13 oriental fire-bellied toads, and 0.2.0 sugar gliders