Sexing Leo babies

Alicewave · 06-24-03, 12:48 PM

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 · 06-24-03, 01:38 PM

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 · 06-24-03, 02:38 PM

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 · 06-24-03, 07:35 PM

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 · 06-24-03, 10:33 PM

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 · 06-25-03, 01:03 AM

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 · 06-25-03, 06:06 AM

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 · 06-25-03, 07:11 AM

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

Samba · 06-25-03, 02:44 PM

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!