The hiden genes of petco

[D0uger]

Alrighty, I'm sure we've all heard our fair share of petco rants/raves/theologies and rare finds so i try not to hit on those subjects.

Instead, I just had a bit of an epithany of sorts. For quite some time now I've been looking into breeding cresties, and like any intelligent herp freak I have done more reading then a virgin college student living out of his pizza delivery truck.

In between the senseless crap that every one reposts just to say they posted a thread on breeding I have found little tid bits of useful information. A sort of Sherlock Holmes case if you will.

So, now your thinking why is this guy wasting my time? Yeah sorry I like typing! Anywaysss, here's the idea. We can all agree that the reptiles we find in big chain companies like petco/petsmart are there simply because those are the designated fronts for emaciated, overstock or otherwise un flattering animals with the occasional slip of a beautiful 100% pinstripe kneecap chocolate flame harley (yeah I snatched that girl for $49.99). Well here's the thing, I'm my readings I've come away with a few interesting tid bits; Cresties do not bear any known pattern of dominant and recessive genes when it comes to morphologic goodness.

Whats the big idea? And how does this come into play? I'll tell ya!
All the info I have come to aquire leads to this. Your average Joe crested gecko from any given petco at any given time has a high percentil chance that it came from a big head breeder (need I really name any?) these breeders who sell their gorgeously morphed animals for hundreds will toss the less pleasing animals to the sharks, so to speak. What they don't know, or perhaps they do and they just don't care, is that those less the pleasing animals carry, somewhere in their ancestral line, the genes of a beautifully morphed animal.

In breeders world I have come to find out that reptile A which has zero dalmation spots and reptile B who is 25% pinstripe can breed reptiles C & D who both have dalmation spots and 0-100% pinstripe.

So, though you may be purchasing a reptile who may not drop the jaw of any old lizard lover it may carry the workings of an amazing animal. The next step up from dumb luck and a little patience would be figuring out the Da Vinci code which is CG genetics!

Long story short, don't judge a crestie by it's cover because you never know what kind of swan lays beneath that grey goose down. Thanks for reading hope I didnt bore you and please! Let me know what you think, or if you have any information I may be missing.

 

[SOILcresteds]

i had thought about that and i have seen a patternless bred to a patternless that produced harleys and tigers out of the same pairing

 

[lauraleellbp]

I agree with what you're saying, and my own favorite male and the cornerstone of several of my projects was a Petco gecko.

The flip side of the coin, however, is that since the majority of offspring will visably present with traits that are a mixture of the traits their parents display, the likihood of getting "high end" offspring from "plain" pet-grade animals is not nearly AS high as getting them from animals that display those traits to begin with.

Most breeders, even with very high end geckos, end up producing at least a few "pet quality" geckos every year. And will tell you- it's typically hard to sell those geckos, as pet grade geckos are a dime a dozen (and can often be purchased for $15-20 during PetCo sales). It's next to impossible to breed Crested geckos for a profit unless you go Big Scale (as in- breeder colony numbering in the hundreds and that's what you do Full Time), so that means most people need to think HOW they are going to sell the offspring they produce. In my own state, there are no small Expos- so you must have a commercial breeders license if you want to sell at an expo here, and tables aren't cheap. A local pet store may buy a few here and there- but depending on their turnover, a pet may not even be able to sell all the offspring from just a single female. Which leaves the online market. With shipping costs these days, it's VERY hard for people to justify spending as much if not more to have a gecko shipped than the gecko itself. So the online market is primarily effective for "high end" geckos over $100 or so.

Which then takes me back to the first point...

So you can play "genetics roulette" breeding "pet quality" pet store geckos of unknown background if you want, and for a small percentage of people, it will probably pay off. But you need to think long and hard about how you're going to find GOOD homes for all the geckos you'll produce, as Cresties are very prolific and sold very cheaply in pet stores, and that's hard to compete with.

My personal philosophy- start off with the nicest geckos you can. I typically buy geckos as hatchlings, as I can afford much nicer geckos that way. This way the offspring you produce have better chances of selling and ending up in good homes rather than being stuck with geckos you have a hard time "unloading." Giving away free geckos to every friend and family member is rarely a good way to make sure your animals end up in good homes.

 

[SOILcresteds]

well i would not buy a patternless as i am wanting lots of pattern because i like the patterns and think the patternless are kind of borring however i walked into a local mom and pop shop and they had a RTB female orange tiger for sale for 75 and i grabbed her in a heart beat.

 

[MelissaZ]

What I took from it was that there is a chance for greatness ..key word chance. I myself have gotten a couple pretties from PETCO. A flame whose base color fires up almost black and it's flame color a vivid yellow/orange. I also have a flame/Dalmatian with large ink blot type spots. I have also seen really nice 100 percent pinners and reverse ones as well. Unfortunately I didn't know muck about crested or I would have picked them up.

 

[Incident]

I've actually seen something similar before when purchasing my cresties, the store I bought them from had 4 parents on display, none of the parents was yellow, yet Aphex is paternless yellow with dalmation spots and has a light orange glow when fired up.
In my opinion, there is always a chance for greatness, depending on the bloodlines, but as stated above, theres always a higher chance to get parent traits.

 

[mikew1234]

I have to disagree with a few things you pointed out.
First, and this may only be me, if you are keeping a gecko, I would hope you like what it looks like. When I bred crested geckos, I had hundreds, and every one was desirable to me for one reason or another. If I didn't like what a gecko looked like, I would not waste my money or time purchasing them. What it seems you are suggesting is that the $40 is worth the risk reward situation of buying a gecko which you have no idea of the genetics. I will say, that I had quite a few geckos from petco in my collection, and many were amazing looking animals, but again, if it didn't fit into my plans, I did not buy them.

The second thing I must argue is that there is no genetics in crested geckos. There are dominant traits, and co-dominant traits. But no recessive traits proven yet (This is a very big yet, as I know of at least one pied crested gecko). Dalmatian spotting is very much a dominant trait, and the majority of patterns can be considered co-dom.

When I bred crested geckos, I kept very specific groups together. With these groups, I noticed very little variation with babies. My prized group was a 1.3 of orange geckos. None showed any pattern. I never once produced a gecko that did not look like the parents.

Unfortunately, this was also the easiest group to sell when I got rid of my cresties. The person I sold them to decided to replace my pure orange male with a dalmatian orange male. Needless to say, 95%+ of the babies from this group then produced dalmatian babies.
Also, when the orange male was bred to a group to "add more orange", this did not happen.

You are right in the sense that there are no leucistic or albino crested geckos in the trade in comparison to ball pythons, but that does not mean there is no genetics involved in crested geckos.