Elizabeth Freer
Well-known member
Brumation Guidelines for Oedura castelnaui: USA
by Jerry Peebles (February 2004)
If the animals are fat and healthy, I normally start tapering the amount I feed them about September 1st – maybe only feed about half as much. However, if they are recovering from a long breeding season, I recommend feeding all they will eat just to get as much weight on them as possible before cooling. And obviously if they are not in good shape, they are not cooled.
On October 1st I begin cooling and reducing the light cycle on my geckos. Between October 1st and November 1st I gradually reduce the lighting from 14 hours per day to 8 hours per day. I stop feeding everything that I’m going to cool clear down about October 20th to give these geckos the chance to clear their systems of any food. Starting November 1st I drop the temperature to 55-60 F for brumation and leave it there until January 1st. The lows I use for cooling Oedura castelnaui are 55-60 F at the lowest at night. During brumation days (~8.5 weeks) I let the temperature rise to the upper 60s at most. Commencing January 1st I warm these geckos a degree or two a day until they are into the 70s and gradually increase their lighting. I start feeding them again around January 10th. By the end of January I have the light back up to 14 hours a day and the heat back up to 75-80 F during the day.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, USA and lightly mist the brumating Oedura castelnaui about every other day for water and humidity. If a person was keeping them in a more arid area, I feel the misting could be really beneficial for them. In the Pacific Northwest, it probably is not much more useful than just supplying them with a drink.
Although I personally don’t do this, fresh water can always be available in a dish during this time.
There is no exact right way that I know of to cool geckos, but what I have described here has worked for me.
(Thanks for sharing, Jerry!)
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