How to Raise Lizards
Pet lizards can be easy and inexpensive to acquire but may be prohibitive in cost to raise and breed properly. Each lizard has breed specific requirements. You also need to find out if there are licensing requirements in your area. You can still raise lizards for sale, despite all these deterrents, if you understand the proper steps to take.
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Instructions
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Choose one type of lizard to breed and know how big they grow. In order to provide the appropriate housing, you need enough space for your lizards.
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Understand their habits. Each lizard will survive best in their own type of habitat. Some require a woods type of setting and others need a dry arid environment. Some lizards need to have a place to climb. Choose the appropriate floor covering. Lizards will ingest sand, which blocks their intestine
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Feed the lizard according to their natural eating habits. Add supplemental nutrition to their diet according to breed. Green anoles and geckos are insectivores with larger tokay geckos eating pinky mice. Bearded dragons and skinks are omnivores. Provide water daily.
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Heat the tank between 80 to 105 degrees in the daytime and allow it to drop in the evening to the 70's. The exact temperature varies by breed. For example, the bearded dragon requires warmer basking temperatures.
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Place one male with several females. There should never be less than two females per male or more than one male. Remove the eggs once they are laid and place them in a separate cage to hatch under an incubator, or allow the lizard who laid them to sit on them in a private enclosure.
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Keep the babies in a smaller enclosure than the adults. It's best to separate them to a few per enclosure. Keep it moister than normal as babies are subject to dehydration. Babies are voracious eaters and plenty of food should be made available. Feed them what an adult would eat.
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Estimate how much to charge. Calculate the cost of feeding the babies and see what the average selling price is for your lizards. Use the middle to low range, as long as it is more than the cost of raising them, to sell to dealers and other breeders. Sell to the retail customer at middle to upper range.
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Tips & Warnings
Housing requirements vary from breed to breed. Leopard,Madagascar ground, tokay, and fat tailed gecko's require a damp hide box with moss covered floors and a opening. A 15-20 gallon tank will hold two gecko's. A tokay gecko requires the larger. Bearded Dragons and blue tongued skinks need a 40 to 55 gallon tank. Anoles require a 10 gallon area.
Create an egg-laying area from a margarine tub that has a hole in the top. Use dampened sphagnum moss inside. Once the eggs are laid keep them at a relatively constant temperature between 80-84 degrees making sure the moss is always damp. Check the breed. The phelsuma's eggs will rot if moist.
Leopard gecko's and bearded dragons can use paper toweling for the flooring. African fat tailed geckos, Madagascar geckos, and anoles require logs and hides with peat moss as the flooring. Blue tongue skinks like newspaper.
Provide a special UV light for basking. The leopard gecko does not need special light.
As a rule, never house two male lizards together.
