tremper incubation method

ok to get this forum rolling i wanted to get peoples thoughs and opinions on the tremper incubation method...
any of you who do not know
he starts incubation i believe at 80 degrees to determine the sex (female), this lasts for 2 week.. after the two week he put the animal in a 90 degree incubator for the remainder until it hatches.
now what this does the manipulating of the temps is causes amounts of melanin in the animals... resulting in lighter brighter animals.....
now while they make look pretty and all it sure doesnt say a thing about the animals genetics.. i mean yeah its an albino but its light coloration isnt an effect of a genetic mutation.
to me its cheating. now while each to their own, i belive if you incubate this way you should planely state it, to me it makes a HUGE difference and personally i would not knowingly buy an animal incubated this way.
i give credit to the people who are selectively breeding their animals to achieve this putting there time and effort into the animal, which in my mind would result in a much more sound animal genetically.
because if i bought two tremper albinos whom had been tremper temp manipulated and bred then and incubated the eggs normall and hatched out brown albinos i would be pissed...... ok so lets here it and i invite you to the poll and to comment

Thing is...

This isn't an incubation method which forces the animals into temperature ranges outside that which are acceptable for the production of healthy animals (Like the old "pastel" RES "trick").

It's also a method which is widely known and can be replicated by anyone who's breeding their own animals... it's not as if Ron has made a major secret of this strategy. Rather than being irate at brownish neonates, why not just use the same methods? (Not aimed at anyone in particular, just a general question).

I frankly think that the tyrosinase positive strain of albinism represents a greater potential when it comes to the development of additional morphs, the added ability to manipulate the density of melanocytes by manipulating incubation temperature is just another advantage to the strain.

While I am wholeheartedly against the "creation" of morphs using kool-aid or photoshop, incubation temperature fluxuations within the acceptable healthy range for the species result in an animal which will not change color the first time it sheds. The tremper strain has always been represented as a tyrosinase positive strain, any brownish neonates are the responsibility of the breeder... Anyone who isn't familiar enough with the basic pigment production process and the genetics involved with the strain really has no business breeding morphs anyway (or anything else, but I'm picky about what breeders should know, this information is pretty basic).

Just my opinion though.

you have some goof points.. but i see it as being misleading
it has no bearing of the genetics the animal holds. if left at cooler temps these temp manipulated animals will revert and turn at least a portion back it its "somewhat" original color, being brownish.
all forms of albinos thus far in leopard geckos... bell, rainwater and trempers are tryonaise positive... each other them different and i think you can get your diversity there or by selective breeding but not by manipulating temps... just my thoughts

I will not use that method to incubate my leopard gecko eggs because of the really poor results I had on a "test" group of 100 eggs last year. I had a very poor hatch rate and also had an unusually high number of deformities with this group of eggs that I incubated using the Tremper method. Big temperature fluctuations and reptile egg incubation do not go well together! Oh, yeah and to top it all off, most of the geckos turned out male anyway!

I think Tremper probably had to come out a couple of years ago and explain how he incubates his leo eggs. He had been using the method for years, which is why people would buy yellow and pink/white albinos from him, breed them and get some brown babies when incubated normally.

I don't really have a problem with those who use this method to incubate eggs. They can incubate them however the want to but I do think it is only fair to the buyers that these breeders that choose to do this make it clear that their animals are a result of using this method. Lately I think there has become a sort of "stigma" attached to those breeders using this method to incubate their Tremper albino eggs, and I am pretty sure a couple of them are denying the use of the method when they obviously do use it (not going to name names here). For instance they may have announced on their website that they do use this incubation method with no adverse effects but now all of the sudden that statement is gone and they publically deny using the tremper method!

But if there is no problem with Tremper's incubation method than why do some feel the need to hide it from customers? Hmmm food for thought I guess..

How specific has Tremper gotten in his description of the methods used?

Meaning... leopard geckos aren't my favorite things, I pay attention to them because they are reptiles but only to a certain degree unless a point catches my interest (like this thread). Last I had seen, it was simply stated that the temperatures were raised after the phase of growth encompassing gender determination but before the development of pigment producing cells. Has the timeline become more specific? Has the exact method become more specific? Meaning; there's a big difference between switching the incubation temperature by ten, fifteen degrees over the course of five days or a week and then doing the same within a span of minutes.

I know that the two other individuals who have responded on this thread are a far cry away from the single pair basement breeders who might be screwing this up left and right and baking their babies, but depending on how specific a description was given, there still leaves a great deal of room for personal interpretation into the method, which might result in differing degrees of success.

I do see and acknowledge the point about the potential to misrepresent an animal, IF the animals are sold specifically as breeders, with a strong emphasis on the color as a selling point... But even then, the animals themselves are the color that they appear and they are from a bloodline or group of breeding stock which has the potential to replicate the color, it's just a bit tricker than a direct crossing of animals where the phenotype is entirely genotypical without the environmental influence.

Seamus-

Check out these links:

http://www.leopardgecko.com/colorfaq.html

http://www.leopardgecko.com/color.html

I incubated about the same number of eggs (100) as Kelli and had the same problems she stated, low hatch rates (only 40%), a lot of deformities (about 1 in 4), and to top it off, the majority of them turned out to be males!!!

Many breeders say that they do have the problems that other breeders including myself are reporting. The majority of these breeders are using small groups not consisting of more then 10-20 eggs, and it is often the breeders first time successfully reproducing leopard geckos. I also seem to notice several larger breeders using this method and swearing up and down that they have none of the problems we've talked about, what is with that??? I personally think they are hiding something, and they got every reason too. The least they should do is state that the geckos have been incubated using the Tremper/Viets method, don't you???

As for deformities, the majority of the deformities I have experienced are related to development of the eye lids. There may be additional internal and external deformities, perhaps closer observation is required? So why is the temperature fluctuations causing eye lid deformities? Perhaps the higher temperatures are causing premature hatchling and the eye lids still have not developed fully yet??? A lot of people have attributed this problem to vitamin A deficiency, but not one person has been able to tell me why a deficiency in vitamin A would cause underdevelopment of the eye lids, which I mostly only see in geckos incubation with the Tremper method, extreme temperature fluctuations, and severely inbred geckos. I think we need to look into this matter further.

Thanks for the links Kelli, that's exactly what I had seen about the issue months ago when it was brought to my attention on another forum.

It's really not very specific about how it's done, mentioning only the temperature ranges and a time frame, but not listing a grade of change from one temperature to another. Switching eggs instantly from the low eighties to ninety or above can't be good for them, there has to be something a bit more complex involved here.

I do find it interesting that several very reputable breeders have experienced problems with their test groups though... Do the results obtained by others match those which were obtained by Justyn? Were the developmental abnormalities similar?

The only thing which really makes me question if this method is really "bad" or just not as detailed as it should be is Tremper's status in the industry. Ignoring for the moment any of the controversy that surrounds the price drop which he perpetuated that ticked off many other breeders (not really a legitimate complaint)... He and the Center for Reptile and Amphibian propogation are the single largest producer of albino leopard geckos in the world. While this does mean that his breeding stock is large enough to allow him to create larger control groups and test experiments which may not pan out without losing large portions of his potential income... I don't see how anyone losing 40% of their clutches could maintain that place (in terms of production numbers).

I no longer think Ron produces the most amount of albino leopard geckos, I am pretty sure that Gormet Rodent and/or Reptile Industries (Mark and Kim Bell) produces 2-3 times as many, and that's just the Tremper strain. Reptile Industries also works with the Bell strain.

I was under the impression that Gourmet Rodent merely acted as a middleman for most of the herps they sold which were not fresh imports.

Kinda like Mid America or Animals Etc... Buying up entire clutches and collections from anyone who'll sell, be it a single animal or a group of a few hundred.

Could be wrong here but... I didn't think they distributed much except russian torts loaded with parasites, corns of indeterminate genetics and leopard geckos... and obtained them as mentioned above.

Not sure about the Bells...

Regardless of being THE biggest or just ONE OF THE biggest though, if the incubation methods used AS used by Tremper were causing the same kind of results as others have had in replicating it, I don't think he could maintain the production level which he does. Which means that there's some information missing someplace.