learn how to breed the amazing Leaf-tailed Geckos
At Nealon Reptiles, we specialize in breeding Uroplatus species, commonly known as leaf-tailed geckos. We are committed to producing the highest-quality and healthiest geckos. We currently work with 12 species of Leaf-tailed Geckos and have bred all of them.
Breeding these unique reptiles requires careful attention to their natural environmental conditions and a comprehensive understanding of their reproductive cycles. Our Breeding Guide covers the key aspects of breeding leaf-tailed geckos, including seasonal changes, lighting, humidity, and care for the mother to ensure successful breeding.
Keep in mind, the information on this page is a general outline of breeding the Genus as a whole. There are differences in how we keep and breed different species and you can find that information on the individual species page.
Understanding Seasonal Changes
Leaf-tailed geckos, native to Madagascar, experience distinct seasonal changes that impact their breeding cycles. Replicating these changes in captivity is essential for encouraging breeding behavior and supporting egg development. In our facility, we’ve found that cycling Uroplatus is very important to your success in breeding them. If you don’t cycle them, you may have limited success. We feel that these seasonal changes are necessary not only for breeding success but also for the overall health of your leaf-tailed geckos.
Seasonal Variations in Madagascar
One of our goals is to replicate their natural seasons in captivity. This means that you need to understand what the seasons look like there so you can try to mimic them here. These seasonal changes cue breeding behavior and physiological changes in the geckos, making it important to replicate similar conditions in captivity.
A warm, wet season (November to April):
Characterized by high humidity, frequent rainfall, and temperatures ranging from 75-85°F (24-29°C). This is the time of the year when your Leaf-tailed Geckos will breed and start laying eggs.
A cooler, dry season (May to October):
Marked by lower humidity, occasional rain, and cooler temperatures between 65-75°F (18-24°C), mimicking this season will slow your Geckos down and mostly stop breeding activity. While some novice keepers may be tempted to try and skip this season, thinking it would increase breeding activity year-round, we very much discourage you from thinking this way.
The cool-down period is vital to their health. Don’t skip it!
How to mimic the Seasons for your Uroplatus
To mimic the natural environment:
- Warm, Wet Season (Breeding Season):
- Increase daytime temperatures to 75-82°F (24-28°C) with a nighttime drop to 65-72°F (18-22°C).
- Raise humidity levels to 80-90% through regular misting.
- Provide more frequent misting to simulate rainfall, up to 2-3 times daily.
- Increase lighting to 14 hours per day to mimic longer daylight periods.
- Cool, Dry Season (Rest Period):
- Reduce daytime temperatures to 70-75°F (21-24°C) and nighttime temperatures to 60-65°F (16-18°C).
- Lower humidity to around 60-70%, with misting reduced to once daily or every other day.
- Shorten the lighting schedule to 10-12 hours daily to simulate shorter daylight periods.
The cool, dry season serves as a rest period, allowing the geckos to recuperate before the breeding season begins. This seasonal adjustment is crucial for stimulating natural breeding behaviors.
Lighting for Breeding Leaf-Tailed Geckos
Proper lighting plays an important role in leaf-tailed gecko health and breeding success:
- UVB Lighting: Even though leaf-tailed geckos are nocturnal, provide low-intensity UVB lighting. UVB exposure helps synthesize vitamin D3 and supports calcium absorption, which is essential for egg-laying females. We use Arcadia light fixtures and their 6% T5 HO Bulbs on all of our Uroplatus enclosures.
- Light Cycle: Adjust the light cycle seasonally to mimic natural changes in day length. During the breeding season, provide 12-14 hours of light and reduce it to 10-12 hours during rest.
Positioning the UVB light to allow natural exposure gradients enables the geckos to regulate their exposure by moving between higher and lower light areas.
Humidity and Misting for Breeding Success
Humidity is a critical factor for the health and breeding success of leaf-tailed geckos:
- During the Breeding Season (Wet Season), Increase humidity levels to 80-90%. Achieve this through frequent misting, typically 2-3 times per day. The enclosure should have time to dry slightly between misting sessions to prevent mold growth, but maintaining high overall humidity is crucial.
- During the Rest Period (Dry Season), Lower the humidity to around 60-70% to simulate drier conditions. Reduce misting frequency to once daily or every other day.
Proper misting maintains humidity and provides drinking water for the geckos, who drink droplets from leaves and enclosure surfaces. Using an automated misting system can help maintain consistent humidity levels, especially during the breeding season. We use MistKing misting systems in all of our enclosures. We highly recommend this brand. However, we recommend buying one more pump than you need. Over the years, we have had pumps go bad for seemingly no reason. Having a backup pump on hand meant we could swap them out and not have to handmist the dozens of cages served by that pump.
We use HydroFoggers to maintain humidity levels throughout our facility. These foggers work great in large spaces, fogging an entire room. We turn them on not long after the lights go out, and they usually run until right before the lights come on. This allows us to maintain night-time humidity levels without any issues.
Preparing the Female for Breeding
Ensuring the health and condition of the female leaf-tailed gecko is paramount before breeding. A healthy, well-prepared female is likelier to produce viable eggs and recover well after laying.
If you’re already feeding your Leaf-tailed Geckos properly, you shouldn’t have to do much to ensure that your females are healthy enough to breed. You’ll want to ensure that you’re already feeding your Uroplatus various properly gut-loaded insects. Here at Nealon Reptiles, we use crickets, dubia roaches, and red runner roaches, depending on the species. All of our insects are fed a nutritious diet to ensure that they are not only filling but nutritious for our Uroplatus geckos.
You’ll also want to ensure that you’re dusting your insects properly before feeding them to your Geckos. It should be obvious, but adding calcium to your insects before using them as feeders is critical for your females. Often, when we receive messages asking for advice about why someone’s females die during the breeding season, we determine that the breeder didn’t adequately provide calcium (and the means to manage it within their bodies), leading to the female’s death. As with any egg-laying reptile, your gecko needs extra calcium to replace the calcium they use to form the eggs. . You should be using a high-quality calcium supplement anyway (We use Arcadia Earthpro-A), but you might want to up the calcium slightly to help your female prepare for egg production.
You’ll also want to ensure that your Uroplatus geckos are in optimal body condition, with a healthy weight and no signs of illness or malnutrition. Avoid breeding females that are underweight or recovering from any health issues. Doing so will risk the life of your gecko with a low likelihood of even producing viable eggs.
With Geckos that are as fragile as Uroplatus can be, you will want to do everything you can to ensure that your Geckos, especially the females, are as healthy as they can be before breeding them. You’re not doing this only for the Geckos that you’re breeding, but for the future babies as well. We’ve noticed that when we receive Geckos from other breeders, and those Geckos lay eggs right away, the hatchlings are not always as strong and healthy as the baby Leaf-tailed Geckos we produce. We believe that this is due to the healthiness of the female who produced the eggs. In our opinion (but it makes perfect sense), if your female is not as healthy as she should be if she is not being provided the proper nutrients, vitamins, and minerals – her babies will be weak and less likely to survive.
Last but not least, you want to ensure the female has rested adequately during the cooler, dry season. This rest period allows her to regain strength and prepare for the demands of egg production. If your Leaf-tailed Geckos are in breeding mode for more of the year than they should be, this will result in Geckos that struggle to remain healthy, and will likely decrease their lifespan.
Mating and Egg-laying
Once the environmental conditions are set for the breeding season and the female is in good health, mating behavior can be encouraged:
- Introducing the Male: Males can be introduced to the female’s enclosure during the breeding season. Monitor their interactions, as some males may exhibit aggressive behavior. If aggression occurs, separate them and reintroduce them gradually.
- Mating Behavior: Successful mating usually occurs shortly after introducing the male. Signs of a gravid (pregnant) female include increased body girth and changes in behavior, such as seeking cooler areas or hiding more frequently.
Caring for the Gravid Female and egg-laying
After mating, the female will require special care and attention to ensure the successful development of her eggs. The good news is that this isn’t difficult, but it does require you to pay attention to your geckos and their behavior.
First, you’ll need to create a suitable egg-laying area in the enclosure, such as a container filled with moist soil, sand, or a mix of peat and sphagnum moss. We use a variety of containers, but the one that works best for us is the drainage tray of a flower pot—I get them from Amazon. We use a variety of sizes, ranging from 4″ x 4″ to 12″ x 12″.
You can even have the substrate throughout the cage, such as in bioactive enclosures. It simply comes down to personal preference. Here at our facility, we do both. Make sure that your substrate is slightly damp but not wet. You should also have some areas where the substrate is dry. This gives your females a choice regarding where they want to lay their eggs.
Leaf-tailed Geckos will typically lay their eggs under leaf litter. You’ll want to add enough leaf litter to the bottom of your enclosure to give your gecko an area where she feels comfortable laying her eggs. When she knows the time has arrived, she’ll go to the bottom of the cage and crawl under the leaf litter, depositing her eggs there. You can make your life a little bit easier by restricting the leaf litter to only a certain area of the enclosure. Since they will almost lay their eggs under this leaf litter, it’ll make it easier for you to find their eggs. This is a huge timesaver for us, as we often have hundreds of pairs of Uroplatus breeding simultaneously. We use a few different types of leaves but will mostly rely on dried magnolia leaves and oak leaves. We’ve even experimented with using artificial leaves with great success.
Most species of Uroplatus will bury their eggs. The good news is that they typically don’t bury them very deep. You can oftentimes see the tops of the eggs slightly sticking up above the surface of the substrate. Uroplatus phantasticus doesn’t bury their eggs at all, making it very easy to spot them.
Watch for signs that the female is ready to lay eggs, such as increased digging behavior or just hanging out at the bottom of the enclosure. We have found that our females will typically lay eggs 30-45 days after a successful mating. This time frame varies depending on the species you’re working with.
Females typically lay 2 eggs per clutch, but this can vary. Depending on the species, your female will lay anywhere between 4 and 8 clutches per year, but numbers outside of this range have been reported. Here at our facility, we occasionally have a female who will lay less (2-3), but rarely do we have a female lay more.
During this time, keep the enclosure’s humidity at 80-90% at night to support the female’s hydration and prevent egg-binding. During the day, humidity stays between 60-70%.
If you do all of that correctly, you should end up with a female that will lay eggs. Typically, females start laying eggs 30-45 days after mating, but this can vary from species to species. We’ve had female ebenaui lay eggs as soon as 3 weeks after mating.
Once the female has laid the eggs, they should be carefully removed and placed in an incubation container. During the breeding season, we check for eggs every evening. We’ve found that Leaf-tailed Geckos will almost always lay their eggs in the afternoon, so by checking at night, you can ensure that you find any eggs that the female deposited without risking leaving them in the enclosure. If you do this, you can move the eggs into the incubation container without worrying about rolling the eggs. However, if you do not check daily, or there is a chance that the egg has been in the enclosure for more than a day, we suggest marking the top of the egg with a non-toxic marker – a small dot will do – and maintaining that orientation once the egg is in the incubation container. This ensures that the developing embryo doesn’t drown in the egg’s fluid.
We use 20-ounce deli cups with a single hole punched into the lid for incubation containers. We have found that our success rate with these larger incubation containers goes up. We lost a few more eggs when we used smaller deli cups than we would have liked. I had the thought that using a larger container, giving the condensation more surface area to deposit onto, would lead to a higher number of eggs being successfully incubated. Based on what we’ve seen so far, this theory is holding up.
Your incubation container will need a good material that will hold humidity. We use mediums such as vermiculite or perlite moistened with water in a ratio of approximately 1:1 by weight. We have also used Hatchrite with great success. Ensure you’re monitoring the humidity levels of your incubation containers to ensure they’re not losing much water. Over time, water will evaporate from the container – and we always add that water back to maintain the proper humidity levels.
You’ll want to incubate the eggs at temperatures between 68-74°F (20-23°C). Higher temperatures can accelerate development but may reduce hatchling viability; therefore, we don’t encourage you to do this. Some people leave their egg containers in their Gecko room, allowing them to incubate that way. While we’ve heard of great success from people doing this, we have chosen to incubate our eggs in Incubators. We primarily use two incubators, both of them able to warm and cool the inside of the Incubator. We can recommend the line of Incubators from Mike Wilbanks Reptiles and Tri-tech Research.
Keep the humidity in the incubation container high (90%) to prevent the eggs from drying out. Don’t let your eggs get wet. Maintaining the right humidity levels is a fine balance. Make sure to put a hole in the top of your egg container so that some humidity can escape.
There are a few different methods for how the eggs are placed in the incubation container. Some breeders of Uroplatus will make a small divet in the incubation material and place the eggs in it. Here at Nealon Reptiles, we almost always use those small plastic gecko feeding cups to place the eggs in. Whatever incubation material we’re using (vermiculite or perlite), we’ll fill a one-ounce gecko feeding cup up about halfway with that same material but leave it dry. We’ll then place the egg in the cup and place more material around it to prevent it from rolling around. We’ll then make a space in the incubation material for the food cup to sit down into. A second method we’ve been using, with limited success, is using egg incubation trays to keep the eggs elevated above the moistened incubation material. When using these, make sure that you add some dry incubation material into the tray to keep the egg from rolling around.
You’ll want to put a lid on your incubation container with one to small holes in it to allow gases to be exchanged. Label your lid with the species of leaf-tailed gecko eggs inside, the lay date, the parents’ IDs, and the number of eggs. Once a week, we will take the incubation containers out, open them up, and check on the health of the egg. If an egg has gone bad, we will dispose of it. If you notice that the container is not as humid as you need it to be, you can carefully add more water to the incubation material – taking care not to make it too wet.
If temperatures are ideal, leaf-tailed gecko eggs have a long-ish incubation period, typically ranging from 90 to 160 days for our species. Different species take different periods of time to hatch – but the general rule we have observed is that the larger the Gecko, the longer it will incubate.
Post-Laying Care for the Female
After the female has laid her eggs, she will need extra care to recover:
- Calcium Supplementation: Increase calcium supplementation to help replenish lost calcium used for egg production.
- Diet and Hydration: Offer nutrient-rich insects and maintain high humidity in the enclosure to support hydration and recovery.
Breeding leaf-tailed geckos requires careful planning and attention to detail, from seasonal changes and environmental conditions to the health and care of the breeding female. By replicating the natural habitat and understanding the geckos’ needs, you can ensure successful breeding outcomes and the production of healthy, vibrant offspring.