Lavender

A Lavender leopard gecko morph is currently considered polygenic, and therefore a line bred morph. This fact, combined with the tendency of many young lavenders to lose their color as they mature, makes them hard to breed and to improve. ^[1]

Incubation temperature doesn’t influence the brightness of the lavender color. ^[2]

In 2003, JMGReptile set out to create a Lavender line. It was initiated by breeding Stripes to Normals that showed varying amounts of Lavender coloring. The geckos that showed the most lavender were bred back to each other. This process was repeated until the desired look was obtained.

There are several breeders in US and Europe working on lavender projects with different genetic backgrounds. ^[3]

JMG: We started our Lavender Stripe project back in 2003 with some hand picked reptiles from our Red Stripe blood line, and have managed to create the first line bred trait that keeps its lavender coloration no matter the age! The high contrast coloration holds very well into adulthood, and has tremendous possibilities with future breeding projects.

In 2003 we produced a very odd looking stripe from our out bred red stripe blood line. He had a very bright yellow background color and intense lavender following down his bold stripe. The lavender never faded away and he kept all of his brilliant colors into adult hood. We decided to pair him up with a female that was also produced in 2003. She also displayed bright yellow coloration and a good amount of lavender running down her stripe. She is over two years old and since then her yellow has faded out but she still has a good amount of lavender running down her bold stripe. We have been line breeding lavender stripes produced from the origianl pair since 2004 and we now have stripes that are very high contrast and they keep most of their lavender into adult hood. In 2006 we produced over twenty lavender stripes and we kept them all back and raised them to ten months old before we sold them. At nine months old they were all over 45 grams and they all had a considerable amount of lavender, very few of them lost a lot of lavender and the ones that did lose more lavender than the others never completely lost all of it. Our five best looking lavender stripes from 2005 have been bred two years in a row now and they still have a lot of lavender and they are also high contrast and many people that see them say they can’t beleived that they are as old as they are.

This is a very exciting project and at the moment very few people see the real potential in these. This is the FIRST line bred trait that holds and keeps lavender coloration no matter the age. Lavender stripes when crossed with red stripes make unbelievable looking baby’s. Also imagine this morph as a bell albino. Everybody knows that a lot of enigmas have really nice lavender colored saddles, could you imagine what an enigma with a considerable amount of lavender on it would make when crossed with a lavender stripe that has huge bands of lavender running down each side of it’s stripe. Also a lot of lavender stripes have pink hue’s and purple tints over their tails and some times their heads also ^[4]