It's About to get Crazy!!

In all seriousness, it's about to get crazy around here. Since I'm up late and it's now Sunday, I'm going to be spending much my day with the husband cutting, disinfecting, and screening new tubs. Then the early part of my week will be spent decorating said tubs for new arrivals. This week may very well be my last days that are appropriate temps for shipping without a heat pack (and I always try to avoid using one if possible). That means... everybody and their sister (ok nobody's really related) is going to have to get shipped in before cold weather really hits! Probably the same day. I'm going to be absolutely inundated with boxes and new geckos! Fun, but always stressful when there is geckos in the mail, especially when the weather is a little less than ideal.

I'll be shipping one out too - I'm trading away the gorgeous striped black and white gargoyle Rainier to a friend who will keep him as "living art" (which he rightfully deserves, I have never seen a black/white gargoyle that holds a candle to him). I will miss him a lot, I've always admired him so much for his uniqueness and special place in the gargoyle world. Unfortunately, I just don't think he will be used here much for breeding as I'm focusing so much on color with my gargoyles now. I'm just happy he is going to a home where I know he will be happy, healthy, and loved. :) I couldn't ask for anything more regarding homes for my geckos (and as a bonus, I know the communication line is always open - I'll get updates or can email to check up on him anytime).

Random tangent - us breeders LOVE updates on animals we've sold you. I have one gal who emails me periodically with update photos of a baby I sold her (that I bred). He is blossoming into an absolutely jaw-dropping adult, and I am so thankful that I get to be a part of watching it happen! (Though if I'd know he'd be that great I might have kept him, haha!) It's wonderful to see how our babies mature, not only for the "feel good" part, but because it also helps us get a better idea of what kind of animals those particular pairings of parents can/will produce. So if you're reading this, think about sending a breeder or two of some of your animals an update. I promise you they will appreciate it a ton! :)

Back on topic - gecko arrival! I will be receiving packages from goReptiles, Moonrise Geckos, New Caledonia Northwest, SV Geckos, Sticky Side Up Geckos, and Red Sky Geckos. Hoi that's a lot of boxes, especially considering most will have multiples inside. At least a couple of them aren't adults, less space I need to make room for lol! Keep your fingers crossed for me that everyone arrives safe and sound! I know that I'm overdue for a photoshoot for the geckos and have been for ages, keep being patient with me - getting new arrivals situated is more important to me than getting shots of them fully fired when they get here. I'd rather do it a few weeks after they've had some time to settle in. Maybe in the meantime I'll be motivated/have a chance to get updated pics of those for sale (I really need to do that)!

And omg, we're not finished. My new friend from St. Louis, Crystal Rolfe of Tailspinz Geckos (check her out on Facebook, she has a lovely collection), is doing me a HGUE favor and bringing me back some geckos from the Tinley Park NARBC show that was this weekend in Chicago. It allowed me to purchase geckos I otherwise could not have afforded due to shipping. I can't wait to get them! I'll probably meet up with her in another week or two to get those kids. Good thing they're not coming this week too! I snagged some really great deals thanks to my "gecko courier's" services.

I can't wait until next year, I am going to have so many fabulous pairings and I am already chomping at the bit to see what they produce for me! If nothing else, you all are going to have a lot to choose from. ;) I was just working on my list for next year's pairings and it's going to be complete, awesome mayhem when babies start hatching. I hope once I get pics up of all the animals I have acquired (and those I just haven't photographed yet), you all will be as excited as I am for babies. If there is enough interest, I will start wait-listing. First come, first serve. I run wait-lists as follows: if you request to be on one for a certain pairing I will make a note of it, and if someone else inquires, they're "next in line", so to speak. If I decide to let go of a baby from the pairing I will contact the first person on the list before making the baby available to the public, and if they decline, on down the list I go! Feel free to email me if you see somebody(s) you love and would like offspring from - juliethegr8t@hotmail.com. But please, only request to be wait-listed if you're quite serious about buying, as it is quite frustrating to spent the time going through an entire wait-list and getting all "no's", when you could have had your animal listed for sale elsewhere that entire time.

I'll post an update once the first round of geckos are here with their formal introductions! Keep an eye out.

P.S. The terrapins are doing awesome, I absolutely adore them. They are super cute and very entertaining. I have tried to get some photos of them but it's incredibly difficult as now they associate me with food and try to frantically swim through the glass every time they see me. I try to catch them basking, but I also hate to disturb them when they are (though sleeping turtles are SO CUTE with their eyes all scrunched shut)!! I may just have to post some blurry photos, gasp. They're simply too cute not to share, and they have already made their distinct personalities clear. One likes to spend time in the "sun" and the other plays "Kraken" and sinks the already sunken pirate ship in their tank. I've give you a guess who is who. ;)

Recovery and Renewal

Hi anyone reading this - long time no post, on my part. It's been a long haul since I last posted, I can't believe that was almost a year and a half ago. So this one is going to be a novel of a catch-up post, you've been warned! Sad to say that my spirit broke a bit when I lost my first baby (previous post), but then I lost another, Bazarak. Same type of symptoms, though I tried even harder to save Rokha's clutchmate. I was determined not to lose another one due to this mysterious "something". I took my little kid into the only vet within a 3 hour radius who saw reptiles, even though I knew I wasn't going to be getting answers or help - I just wanted to get some Baytril (an antibiotic) in case this was some sort of infection. I got what I expected, the vet had no clue what was going on and was willing to take my suggestion. I got my Baytril. I carefully administered it orally to Bazarak as instructed, and he hated it (it tastes awful to them). He just kept going downhill as I tried everything within my power to save his life. When he finally passed, in my hand, my heart broke. I couldn't stand losing my babies like this!

Unfortunately, Bazarak was not the only death to come. Not long after he passed, my husband and I made the move to Missouri from Kansas. It was quite the series of trips as we had all the geckos to move (I may do a gecko moving tutorial with all my photos from that trip - nobody even lost a tail, it went well), my fish who I had owned for many years, my cat, 2 still fairly new-to-us kittens, two dogs, and two horses! Oh and don't forget the plants, including the philodendron with ten plus feet of vines... Thankfully we all safely made it to our beautiful new home which is now our wonderful farm (we fenced and cross-fenced our ~6 acres and added 3 horses and 10 chickens).

It was awhile after moving that anything went wrong - I don't blame any of it on that. First was Páyos, my rubber boa and first and only snake. She was originally wild caught and not knowing her history, she may have simply died from old age. It was an unexpected loss and I did take it hard, as I do with any of my animals. Then I started hatching out my first agricolae babies, which was exciting! I had 4. Now I have 2, and both of them are deformed from MBD (Metabolic Bone Disease). The two babies that died were sudden and again, unexpected. They were eating and behaving normally one day and dead the next. With the problems that the two survivors began to exhibit - trouble shedding and signs of MBD, I figured that the food I had switched my collection over to (more on this later) might just not have enough calcium in it for this species, and/or the food their mother was fed when she laid their eggs (Repashy) caused a problem. It was the sole food for my hatchlings as they were uninterested in bugs. So I started giving calcium glubionate orally to the two survivors and putting them in front of a UVA/UVB light. It worked, they made it. Both have permanent deformities and look a bit strange, but are now healthy and doing well on yet a different commercial diet (one I'm happy with and sticking with). However, *dun dun dun*, at the same time I was losing babies, I also lost Cobble, my adult female agricolae and mother to the babies. I was devastated - she was not only expensive, but from an uncommon lineage and valuable to the gene pool. I chose not to have her necropsied, but from what I could tell she was not egg bound and there were not external signs of trauma. My only guess is that she may have died from the diet they were on at the time, or more likely from the Repashy previously as that's what she was eating for a long time before I switched the collection over to a new food.

So what's all this talk about food? Well, take what I say with a grain of salt. This is just my personal experience and opinions and I am well aware that many believe differently. However, with that said, I no longer feed Repashy CGD, what used to be the gold standard for feeding geckos such as cresteds and gargoyles. Repashy came out with a "Version 3.0" and that was when my problems started. It was not at all well-received by my collection as a whole and they ate VERY little of it. I had one female, Perdi, go on a starvation diet, no matter what I did for her. She was a healthy adult female and then whittled away to 17 grams - she was literally skin over bones. I could see all the bones in her skull (I was sure she was doing to die so didn't get one, but now I wish I had a "before" picture to compare to her these days). After several months of my collection not eating much, the deaths began - first with Rohka. Then Bazarak, who I chose to have necropsied to see if I could get any answers at all. No answers, nothing came up abnormal, even on pathology I had sent out.

I'd never lost babies like this before, so what had changed? The food! That's it. Absolutely nothing else had changed pertaining to my husbandry. I reached out to the gecko community and found I was not the only one having problems. Breeders (even some "big names") were having poor egg production, bad egg shell formation, dead hatchlings in the egg, failure to thrive hatchlings, and overall a poor feeding response. Not everyone was experiencing this but there were enough in the same boat as me that I decided to try a new diet on the market that was also touted as "complete", "Big Fat Gecko Smoothie Mix", or BFG. My collection immediately started to eat better, even the first night I fed it I noticed a drastic change. My husband and I charted the percent eaten for awhile and proved to ourselves that they were progressively eating more. I also tried Clark's gecko diet, but had a less enthusiastic feeding response, so it was back-shelved. Then the problems with the agricolae happened. I didn't know what to do, I thought I was stuck having to supplement extra calcium and watching everyone like a hawk. Thankfully, Matt Parks at Pangea Reptile had been hard at work on a diet of his own, and he soon offered it to the public. Feeding responses were reported to be great, eggs were good, and people were reporting faster growing hatchlings. I had to try it! Worked like a magic charm and I won't go back. I'm thrilled with it, my gang loves it and many of them completely lick their dishes clean. I haven't gone through a breeding season with it yet - that will be next year - but I'm not worried. I have heard nothing but good things from breeders feeding this food. I wouldn't hesitate to say this diet is the new standard for gecko food. I'd recommend Pangea Fruit Mix Complete Gecko Diet to anyone, and I will never recommend Repashy again (in fact, I'll do the opposite). I had mixed results with the BFG, but in my opinion I'd say it can be a decent diet if regularly supplemented with properly gut-loaded and calcium dusted insects (good with any diet, IMO more important with some than others such as this one).

My mental/emotional recovery from all of this has been slow, and for awhile it was hard to be around the geckos at all. Then, a few months after we moved, in October of 2013, I took a fall jumping my horse and fractured a vertebrate in my back. That made it literally impossible to care for the geckos and my husband can never be thanked enough for all the times he has sprayed and fed them for me as I recovered. Apparently a broken back wasn't enough either, so in July of this year I had surgery for excision of endometriosis. That recovery was very long, painful, and slow as my tolerance for narcotics is very low and I literally recovered on Tylenol (NOT recommended)! I'm finally starting to get some of my energy and motivation back and part of that has been with the geckos. I have renewed my focus and narrowed down my goals/projects. I have purchased some outstanding new animals to help me achieve those goals, and I will soon be parting with those that no longer fall within the projects I want to work with. It's already is very difficult trying to decide who I have to say goodbye to and sell, but I'm working on it. (Keep your eyes peeled for my sale, and all the new animals being added - I'm slowly updating the website!) I look forward to breeding in 2015, I have missed having little baby cresties and gargs around! I have some stellar animals these days (who really need photos so you all can appreciate them too, I'm long overdue for a gecko photoshoot and I know it) and I am confident they'll produce great offspring.

Here's to a mental, emotional, physical recovery.... and most of all to a fresh start!

P.S. I also lost all the fish I brought with me from Kansas due to a late-appearing disease on a fish from a local fish store, and due to the sadness and stress of fighting for and ultimately losing fish I'd had for 6+ years (with the potential to live much longer), my largest (and only currently running) fish tank is being revamped into a turtle tank! In fact, tomorrow my new baby Northern Diamondback Terrapins arrive. Make sure to check out their page in the collection!

New Projects Decided

Well, I've decided what I'm going to do for the upcoming year. I'm excited for some new projects!! I talked with a good friend of mine and fellow gecko/reptile breeder and enthusiast, A.F. Parker (aka Styx), and we came up with some great ideas. The first idea (that I'm thrilled is now possible) requires a bit of back story.

In the spring of 2010 my friend had a horrific and completely unexpected occurance happen to several of her baby geckos. She fed several of her animals (4 baby cresties, 2 baby gargoyles, and 2 sub-adult cresties) butterworms one day. She noticed that as the geckos bit into the worms the worms arched and released a clear fluid onto the faces of the geckos. There are other details, but in a nutshell, after those geckos shed it became clear that they had caustic burns (scales missing and all), 2 severely. The reason never became fully clear though thankfully the geckos did recover. Read through Styx's forum thread, "A Warning: Use Caution With Butterworms", to get all the details, hypotheses, vet information, and more. I especially recommend reading it if you feed butterworms to any Rhac species (they seem especially vulnerable with their small scales and delicate, thin skin.

Before this incident occured, I had already decided to purchase a baby gargoyle from Styx because it was from a beautiful red base pairing and I loved both parents. Unfortunately my little baby, "Hida" was one of the gargoyles to be burned, and one of the 2 most severely burned geckos. Here are some photos of her post-burn - she has salve on her, hence her "goopy" appearance (all photos in this post are by Styx):




She was truly a sorry sight for quite some time. I told Styx I was still going to take her anyway, no matter how she turned out, and give her a loving forever home. Hida did heal up and I got her last year. Before she came to me she was a very stunted, slow-growing baby who Styx didn't think would ever reach normal size, so Styx requested I not breed her because of her history. However, the amazing part is that she is now a huge, healthy female who has even had to go on a diet! She is by far the largest-bodied and heaviest animal in my collection. Hearing this, Styx gave me the go ahead to breed her this year! Whoo hoo! She is a red based, orange blotched reticulated. Simply gorgeous (I'll be getting photos of her soon). I can't wait to breed her to Frank, those are going to be some stunners of babies. Red bases all around, if I had to guess! So as for the gargoyles, this year I will be breeding Frank to Hida and trying again with Pâté as well. I really hope to be successful, I just love gargoyle hatchlings. They're so chubby and adorable.

On the crested gecko front, Styx helped me out there too! Ok she probably coerced me, but I'm perfectly happy with the result. :) I had been looking for a mate for my extreme harlequin male "Vizzini", so asked her if she had any adult females for sale. She named a few off and I fell head over heels for "Nova", a tri-color extreme harlequin female she was considering selling. She's a beautiful girl and I've been told she's even better in person. Check out her awesome sauce:


Then Styx played dirty, showing me an ad she had just posted for an outstanding young male lavender extreme harlequin with markings that I *love*. Besides his base color, he looks a ton like his dad, the now-famous Inazuma:


I can trace back my little guy's lineage 2 generations, with photos of all grandparents. He is without a doubt a cornerstone male worth building a project around, and I plan to! I will be breeding him to "Nova" (I may change her name) when he's old/big enough. He's only about 10 grams right now. But he's outstanding, and will only get better! I'm going to have to come up with the perfect name for such an incredible animal. Here are some photos of him:




Isn't he just the most handsome little devil? I'm thrilled with him and can't wait for both of them join me (it'll be a few more months or so for weather purposes). I may still breed Nova to Vizzini (if she's not still gravid by one of Styx's males) to see what he produces, but as of now he's for sale. I am male-heavy and I just don't really have any females that would compliment his unique pattern/color, and can't find any either.

Lots of changes, but I am happy with where this is going. I have a feeling lavender and creams are going to stay in my future for awhile, what with this new boy and also I'll probably be keeping my 100% lavender pinstripe male to breed into my current lavender/cream lines. And I can't wait to start with the gargoyles again, I want to see what Frank can produce with another red based female (or two)! ;)

Egg Updates

Tonight while feeding (and checking lay boxes like I do nightly) I was *thrilled* to find 2 beautiful, perfectly calcified eggs in Panic and Liebchen's laybox. Since Liebchen laid a dud less than two weeks ago, these are finally some more from Panic! :D I'm very excited, her first clutch of the season only had one fertile egg - but these two both have beautiful cheerios!

I candled the other eggs I've got incubating to see what's going on and it's a good thing I had started out with my happy two brand-new fertile eggs, because otherwise it was not good news. The remaining egg from Liebchen's first clutch of the season is not good either. It's hardly developed at all. I will continue to incubate for awhile longer it but I have no hope for it. And then I candled her next set, and sadly they did not look good either. :( Both appeared to have developed to a point (I could see where there are eyes), but have since stopped developing.

This happened to me last year with a virgin female - I ended up cutting the eggs open since they never molded and I found partially developed embryos that had simply stopped developing for some reason or another. I'm guessing it will be the same situation this year unfortunately. And since for her last clutch Liebchen laid only 1 egg, and an infertile one at that, I put her in for another successful copulation with Inigo tonight, just to see if we can get some babies at all for the year. The female last year produced 6 fertile eggs - 4 hatched healthy babies and 2 I cut open and found embryos. The second clutch from Liebchen developed further than the first, so I'm crossing my fingers that third time is a charm!

I was a little concerned that perhaps it was a problem with Inigo since there was 0% success with Liebchen so far. However, that concern vanished - Panic seems to be having more success since I saw the baby in her egg move tonight. :) There was a very obvious little curled tail and it moved around quite a bit. So I was thrilled to see that! Hopefully the two tonight will develop just as well. Inigo is such a beautiful gecko (as are the ladies) and I really want to produce some of his offspring! Though I gotta mention, he's so weird when breeding... he never lets go on his own so when I finally got them separated tonight he ended up popping out both hemipenes. I'm hoping he get's them all tucked away safely. It was certainly strange looking, I haven't seen that before.

Also tried for Pongo and Perdi again, unsuccessfully. He's just such a lover, not a fighter, and she's the opposite. He immediately starts chirping and licking but as soon as he starts touching her she bites like crazy at his face. A few rounds of that and he won't even try anymore (not that I can blame him)! I am dying for some of his kids so I'm going to keep trying with them - who knows, maybe we'll catch her on a good day. She *has* been digging in her laybox again so maybe there's still hope without another copulation, but we'll see. If worst comes to worst I may breed her to Wesley - he cannot be deterred, and he always produces spotty kids. I haven't been disappointed with any of his offspring and it might be interesting to see what that cross would produce.

Cross your fingers for eggs! Lots of healthy, fertile eggs! :D A happy stable temperature is definitely making a difference, everybody is even eating more. That's a huge weight off my shoulders.

Love Hurts.

My gecko Wesley and I (he is the gecko featured in the header of all the pages of my site, Familiar Exotics) have a unique relationship. I realize that he is a strange, somewhat confused and very entertaining GECKO. However, he thinks that my HANDS are wonderful, beautiful, most amazingly smelling female geckos. They are not. They are human hands. However, I do not think Wesley will ever realize his unfortunate mix-up.

Whenever I'm in his cage, whether to clean, mist, or feed, he tries to get to my hands so that he can subdue them with bites and chirp chirp chirp to his heart's content. Usually it's not much of a bother because crestie bites don't really hurt - they have such small teeth that I'd never had a painful bite (gargoyles are a different story).

Tonight... was different.

"Dum de dum, I'm not doing anything. I'm just sitting here lookin' cute!"


"What?! I'm completely innocent! Look at this face! See, I'm even smiling!"


Let me just respond to that with a "yeah right!" Retard. Check this out:



Yeah, believe it or not, that's a crested gecko bite. Little punk. He grabbed me like usual, but I wasn't expecting it and he got the entire end of my pinky in his mouth, up to right below the nail. And this bite HURT! I had to distract him with the other hand to finally get him off, and then he climbed up to the top of his cage to follow me for the pictures you see of him above.

So yeah, it bled quite a bit! I was surprised, the actual bite isn't very big (this is after I washed it out):


But it still hurts, dang it. Just a bad place for a bite. It's all puffy and you can even see a line on my nail where the some more of his teeth were.



So in any case, watch out for those crestie bites! Haha, just kidding. This was just one of those random freak events. I have been bit worse by one of my gargs - cresties are at the bottom of the totem pole as far as bite pain/damage goes.

Cresties < Gargoyles < Tokays (And this is why I do not have a Tokay!)



Edited to add: I just witnessed the necessary activity for Frank x Pâté babies! So super excited. Frank's never worked so fast in his life (was like 5-10 minutes) - guess since she wasn't squawking at him he decided to take his chance!

Finally! More Success!!!

Finally got Inigo and Panic to do their thing! I took the log out two days ago and tried them last night with no luck. He's such a stinkin' sensitive gecko he gets freaked out if I put my hand in there, but then again, I have to put the female directly in front of him to get him interested. So it's kind of a catch 22 and I have to be careful. Tonight the stars aligned or something, because they finally did the deed. Pretty excited, I was getting concerned that I wasn't going to get babies from this pair for the year. And now I don't have to mess with Inigo in the middle of the night anymore, even better! He is so violent afterwards too, he grabbed her back leg when I was taking her out of his cage and he would not let go for anything. She was biting me out of desperation, so I started flicking him on the head and he finally let go. Big bully!

I peeked at Perdi since I just stuck a laybox in her cage two nights ago... and she was half in it! So she's getting close to laying, and hopefully those will be fertile.

I also candled Liebchen's eggs again and saw something I'd never seen before. I always mark the eggs where the "cheerio" is and put that line up in the incubator. Tonight when I candled them the cheerios had moved! Both of em, probably 1/4 inch to one side. I'm still going to leave them line up and I bet they realign at some point, because I've heard of breeders who have tried putting their eggs in the incubator with the cheerio at the bottom (on purpose, as an experiment) and it always moved to the top. I just thought it was interesting, as I've never seen the cheerio move after being marked. Who knows though, they're still very very early in the development process and like I said in an earlier post, they are from a virgin female and may be a little "funky". I will see if I can get some pics or video of the magical golden "cheerio" in the next few days to show some folks who may not know what it looks like. :)


And in final news, there is a new gecko coming tomorrow, yay! A friend of mine bred her and has kept her for me for a long time, so I'm excited to finally meet her. She's a female gargoyle gecko who I named Hida (I was having a "HIDA scan", a gallbladder scan, the day I decided to get her). I haven't seen recent pictures of her in awhile, so I look forward to seeing what she looks like nowadays. She also is a survivor of a bizarre, unexplained "burn" incident - I'll post more about it with photos after she's here. Praying for a safe trip for my new girl!!

I Take It Back! Success!

Apparently, complaining works on non-breeding geckos! I decided to try something new - introducing the female to the male's cage (usually I do it the other way around) and doing it in the dark, after they've been awake several hours (the lights had been off about 2 1/2 hours).

First, I grabbed Perdi and stuck her in Pongo's cage. He got literally one sniff and he went nuts - biting his vine, my hand (twice - ouch!) and finally Perdi, when I got her situated in front of him (thankfully he was in an easily accessible place). Probably took all of five minutes and it was over. He's already got his hemipenes back where they belong and nobody is worse for the wear. Poor Perdi had to be bred with her leg in his mouth instead of her neck, but hey he's new at this and it worked! She has yet to lay any eggs for me since I've owned her, so we'll see what happens now.

Then I got Liebchen and put her in front of Inigo in his cage. He grabbed her neck immediately and they started wandering around like that. Of course I'm trying to carefully remove the log the caused the problem yesterday while this is going on, without disturbing them. But I was successful and so were they! Inigo is a very long, big gecko, and Liebchen is petite and tailless, so it was a challenge for him to get situated right. After they were done and I removed her from the cage, Inigo got very aggressive and was lunging and gaping at me as I misted him... weirdo! Maybe he was mad he didn't get to cuddle afterwards. ;) He still hasn't retracted his hemipenes, so I'm keeping an eye on that at the moment. He's not even licking it yet, he seems to be in a weird trance. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, he's got a strange disposition to begin with! But he better take care of things, there aren't good herp vets around here.

I'll breed Panic to Inigo in a week or so, hopefully I can keep track of who is laying what that way (they live together and both have been laying duds). I also weighed them so if I find eggs and don't know who laid, I can weigh them and hopefully give it my best guess based on weight loss!

Anyway, I'm a little worried about Inigo, but otherwise super excited! Hopefully dalmation babies are now in my future, and creamy lavenders! :D

And now that I've finished writing this, I just went and checked and Inigo's got everything neatly tucked back where it belongs. Huzzah! Two easy, successful breedings in 10 minutes! There's got to be some benefits to being a night owl... this is one of them I guess!

Ahh... My Virgin Boys....

Last night I gave two of my virgin crested gecko boys a crack at breeding (Pongo and Inigo). Neither one got the deed even close to done!! Pongo pretty much slept and wasn't remotely even interested in his date (Perdi), and though Inigo was slightly more successful, still nothin'. He got the girl (Liebchen) by the neck as necessary, but then got a little too excited and caused them to fall to the bottom of the cage... whereupon she ran and hid up in the top of a hollow plastic log where he couldn't get to her. *sigh* After that he just wasn't interested.

I'm afraid this year will be like last year - I gave them both an opportunity last year and neither was successful then either. Inigo even had a nice experienced, tolerant girl to practice on, but he just never lined up and did the actual deed. I don't know what I'm going to do with these boys!! I'll keep trying but they're certainly frustrating me. I've got these two males who can't be bothered to make babies, and then the other two who regularly try to make them with my hand!! Pongo and Inigo don't have to go that far, but for goodness sakes gentlemen, make an effort.

I'll give them more opportunities soon because I was really hoping for babies from both this year (I'm breeding later than most breeders on purpose, but I do hope they "do things" sooner rather than later, especially as several babies from Liebchen and Panic are already spoken for in a deal with their previous owner). So please everybody, send the baby-gecko-making vibes to my house, they are sorely needed. Maybe I'll start piping some Barry White into the gecko room...