Sticking to a breeding plan for a whole season

[kewzoo]

I'm hoping someone can tell me whether my understanding about breeding is correct or not.

I'm guessing that if I want to breed geckos, I have to commit to one male per female for the whole breeding season. In other words, I can't really "try out" a combination with Male A and Female A and then, after I hatch a clutch, decide, no, I would rather pair Female A with Male B. I'm assuming this because I see that the female can hold sperm and keep laying fertile eggs long after she has been visited by the male. If I introduce Male B, I have no way of knowing whether future hatchlings are the offspring of A or B. Is this correct?

Thanks for any instruction,
Katharine

 

[acpart]

That's generally correct. It's probably likely that if you did 1 breeding with a male, got 3-4 clutches and then did a different breeding with a different male that subsequent clutches would be from the 2nd male, but it's not worth the risk. I did this on 2 occasions, both where there were issues with the first male:
a. a female wasn't producing fertile eggs with Male A (the other female was doing fine with him and he has just completed his 10th season as a good breeder), so at the end of the season I paired her with Male B and she produced 3 fertile eggs

b. I bought a female and was told that she'd been with a young male and was gravid. After she didn't produce anything, I paired her with a male and she laid fertile eggs.

Aliza

 

[Solagratia500]

female leopards retain sperm for the season. So one breeding lasts all their eggs for the season, although some breeders mid way will mate to the male a second time if the female is producing a lot of eggs just in case. However, you really shouldn't ever change the male because you may end up not knowing the genetics or what they're het for. Like if you took a blizzard male and bred it to a normal female then change and bred her to a tremper male. Now you don't know if the babies are normal het tremper or normal het blizzard and that will really screw over someone trying to breed them if you guess.

Honestly you should probably set up a 3 year plan. breed the pair you want, keep the hold backs you need and breed for sex then plan what you're doing with them the following year.

Ex. Blizzard het tremper bred to a tremper to have a chance of getting a tremper het blizzard. The next season take the tremper het blizzard and breed to the blizzard het tremper for a chance at blazing blizzards, ect

By doing this you have a higher chance of getting much nicer morphs. Just be careful not to breed back to much or if you're focusing on a certain line bring in a similar morphed animal for variety of genetics so you'll have less issues of to much inbreeding. But breeding is mostly all a game of percentages and figuring out your chances ahead of time helps a lot in success! Unless you're really unlucky which totally happens to..anywho, good luck!

 

[kewzoo]

Thanks very much! (Aliza too).
This is pretty much what I figured, but I wanted to double check. When I suddenly realized that this was probably the case, I understood how people must invest years in their projects. And I see the wisdom of really planning ahead!
Thanks again,
Katharine