Back in the early 2000s, I happened upon a strange looking Crested Gecko up in Buffalo NY and immediately purchased her.
I named her “Blue” and promptly began what I would not realize until almost 20 years later was a pretty interesting project!
Blue’s first clutches didn’t produce anything particularly interesting, so I kept her primarily as a pet gecko, as she had a fantastic personality. Every so often I’d pair her with a different male to see if anything unique came out, but never thought much of the offspring.
One clutch however, produced a baby that surprised me… This baby was unusually dark. I kept this (and many of her subsequent offspring) as holdbacks to see if this dark color ended up being heritable.
It turned out, as these animals aged – they got darker and darker. The babies rarely looked that dramatically different than a normal baby from the same clutch, but within 6-12 months the pigment comes in and they are completely stunning!
The original F1 offspring of Blue (named “Monty”) ended up being the first of an expanding line of what I am now referring to as the “Velvet” Crested Gecko.
Monty produced many offspring in her years in my collection, including the majority of the F2 Velvets that are just now producing their first clutches.
I’m extremely excited to see what this project yields years down the road!
One of the goals is to breed this into Lilly Whites – to produce a solid white stripe with black sides. I have a few holdbacks that look promising!
Baby Velvets have a very “Axanthic” appearance (the animal below on the left).
This animal will likely darken with age to match the dark sides in the individuals above! This is almost exactly how the darkest of the visuals have looked as babies!
I’ve brought some of the Velvets and Velvet siblings to shows to spotlight this past year, and hope to make some of these available to the public in the not-too-distant future!