The first step in breeding leopard geckos is education. You need to learn as much as possible about this species before you'll be prepared to properly care for these fascinating lizards, including breeding. It's not that hard to breed them as long as you know the facts about these animals.
If you have both male and female geckos, you'll be able to breed them. You shouldn't house these geckos together all of the time though, since this can cause stress to the female and lead to health issues. Housing two males or two females together can also be a problem. Geckos tend to be territorial and will often fight to the death - not exactly what you had in mind.
Until your geckos are at least six months old it can be nearly impossible to distinguish them by gender, since baby geckos look the same regardless of whether they are male or female. You can't (and shouldn't try to guess based on head size alone).
A surefire way to establish the gender of your geckos is to look at the base of their tail where the vent is located. Look for a v-shaped arrangement of femoral pores. In female leopard geckos, these pores will appear to be significantly fainter than they are on a male leopard gecko. The males of the species can also be distinguished by the two hemipenal bulges present just underneath the vent.
Your leopard geckos have to be about a year old before they're mature enough to begin breeding. Make sure that the female gecko especially is in excellent health and is not underweight before you attempt to breed your geckos. You probably won't actually see your geckos mating, but the telltale bite marks on the female will let you know that things have gone successfully. Keep your mating pair housed together for a couple of days to a week to make sure that they have a chance to mate.
The female will begin to gain weight as the eggs develop; she'll lay her eggs in four to six weeks after mating. The first time your female leopard gecko lays eggs, the clutch will probably be small; one, perhaps two eggs. More mature geckos may lay as many as ten, though one is more typical the first time around.
You're going to need a laying box for your female to lay her eggs in. This should be a humid place where her eggs won't dehydrate while they develop. Place one to two inches of moist perlite or vermiculite in the laying box to keep the conditions humid enough to prevent the eggs from drying out. Watch to make sure that your female leopard gecko lays her eggs here - if she lays them elsewhere, they will likely dehydrate and be unviable. If you see eggs somewhere else and they are not yet dehydrated, you might be able to successfully incubate them.
An incubator is a must to keep the temperature constant while the baby geckos develop inside the eggs. An inconstant temperature can lead to developmental abnormalities, so make sure to keep the eggs at a constant warm temperature. The eggs will hatch in about forty to sixty days, depending on how warm the conditions are.
When you see the eggs start to appear swollen, your baby geckos are about to be born. In around a week, they'll start breaking through the shells using their tooth; this tooth is for this purpose alone and is lost shortly after birth. Keep watching the eggs and you may be lucky enough to see your newborn geckos emerge!
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