Sexing Leo babies

[Alicewave]

At what age can you determine a Leo's sex? I have scoured the internet and found a range of 1-6 months that you have to wait before you can tell. So this question goes out to the experienced breeders especially.

[Samba]

Meg... I would say the average age to sex geckos is probably 5 months or so. At this age you really can't visually sex them, but it is possible to probe (I am not a fan of this technique). If you want to visually sex them, I would suggest somewhere around 1 year to be sure. I've got an itty bitty baby right now that is unsexed, and although s/he is around 6 months old, I'd opt to wait and see how things 'develop' (no pun intended) =)

[LISA127]

i believe u can usually tell by six months at the latest. in my experience, usually the boys are pretty obvious by that time. and mine are usually fighting by that age also.

[Clownfishie]

It really depends... some breeders who know exactly what they're looking for can sometimes sex leos as young a 2 months old with a fair amount of accuracy... more accurate sexing can be done at 4-6 months by which point a male's hemipenes should be fairly obvious.

Samba -- I've never even heard of probing in relation to geckos (or at least not leos), I was under the impression that it was only used on snakes... where have you heard of this being done? I'm curious now... ;)

[LISA127]

4-6 months is when i visually sex my leos. it has also been my experience that the male's hemipenes are obvious at this point. every one of my male babies were sexed by six months.

[Youkai]

Probing geckos? I don't even know how that would work, they are not nearly the same as snakes.

I can sometimes tell the sex of a leo as young as 2-3 months, and almost always by 5-6 months. Males start to develop prominant bulges quite young.

[DragnDrop]

By 5 months you should be able to tell. Unless it's Cujo :)
For some reason Blizzards seem hard to sex too - females have as much 'bump' as males from what I've been able to gather. I've got experience there - my 1.4 is 0.5 so I added a male - ended up with 0.6. Bought a guaranteed no doubt about it male -- 0.7 One more male for the road, last try, it was almost written in blood, I checked him out myself too.... 0.8
Now I'm making hets with my baldy tang male, and I'll incubate every egg for male. I figure out of all the eggs from 8 females, I should be getting one het male??? maybe?? LOL

[Alicewave]

Thanks for the replies guys that clears things up. So I take it the hemipenes show up before the vents?

[Samba]

For those interested in probing... we have a local shop here (of which I am a big consumer and supporter), who have been known to probe Leos. Now, like I said I don't think it's nice to do that to any animal, but I know they sex their young leos and fatties this way. I agree with most of the above statements... male leos start bickering and developing around 5 months... however it's never fullproof. I've had some young ladies bicker, and some small males you would swear were female. The little one I'm raising right now I'm pretty sure is a little girl, but you never can tell!