breeding a blizzard?
- Thread starter erik2514
- Start date
Tokaybyt
New member
Blizzard and Murphy Patternless are essentially dead end morphs. You might be able to clean blizzard up some (remove the washed gray coloration, working towards a whiter gecko) with introducing Mack Snow into the equation. You can also introduce any of the 3 strains of albino into the blizzard gene to get a brighter white gecko. Because blizzard is a mutation that removes patterning, you're basically stuck there. The only other option are eye mutations like snake eye.
As for expectation, that all depends on what your blizzard is heterozygous for and what you pair with her.
If you just breed her back to another pure (e.g., not het for any other traits) blizzard, you'll get all blizzard babies.
If you breed her to any other gecko that doesn't have the blizzard mutation, then all babies will be heterozygous for blizzard and whatever genes the male has.
The responsible reptile keeper questions however start with why do you want to breed? I've been keeping leos since '96 and breeding them since '97 (though I haven't paired anything since 2012). As a small scale breeder, these are questions you have to ask and be able to answer:
If I elect to breed my geckos, will I be able to...
As for expectation, that all depends on what your blizzard is heterozygous for and what you pair with her.
If you just breed her back to another pure (e.g., not het for any other traits) blizzard, you'll get all blizzard babies.
If you breed her to any other gecko that doesn't have the blizzard mutation, then all babies will be heterozygous for blizzard and whatever genes the male has.
The responsible reptile keeper questions however start with why do you want to breed? I've been keeping leos since '96 and breeding them since '97 (though I haven't paired anything since 2012). As a small scale breeder, these are questions you have to ask and be able to answer:
- Why do I want to breed my geckos?
- Am I prepared to cull any deformed babies as to not perpetuate any possible negative and/or deleterious genes? (Don't think of this answer in human/emotional terms, think of this answer as a wild predator vs prey aspect.)
- Is there a market in my area to sell any babies I produce? If not, am I willing to house 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 babies and patiently sell or even give them away them as the market allows?
If I elect to breed my geckos, will I be able to...
- ...feed my adults properly so that they remain healthy during the breeding season?
- ...have room to incubate all eggs?
- ...afford to now not only feed my adults enough to remain healthy, but also to feed any babies?
- ...will I have the space to properly house all adults and babies separately, both for the health of the geckos and to avoid any potential fighting?
- ...house enough feeder insects to do any of the above, as well as afford to properly gutload my feeder insects?
Right I see your points about breeding and I'm still unclear if I'm even going to...I have 3 right now all around 4-6 months old and just getting an idea for the future I have blizzard SHTCTB, and mack snow, but wanted to get everything planned out way ahead of time in case of all those scenarios u mentioned. I don't want to rush into anything I can't handle which is why I've a lead started mealworm colonies and all that in case of having to house many geckos and such.