Animales and particularely reptiles have allways been my biggest interest.I am now 43 years old, and have kept reptiles since I was 12 years old.As most I started with a lot of different animales, like one turtle, two spiders and a cornsnake.The last 15 years though, have been dedicated to the wonderful lizards of the genus Phelsuma. 
Even if the species do look similar, they come from very different altitudes and habitats. That makes them a challenge for any Herpetologist, new to the hobby or experienced. For us, this is the most fantastic hobby of all.

 
Our goals 
One is of course to learn moore about these animales. Each specie have there own unique behavior and needs.Studying these animales in the wild and in captive care, will provide us with the information that we need to save these lizards for future generations to come. The most important goal of all is to be able to provide seriously interested hobbyists, Zoo´s and institutions with captive bred animales. Over the years thousands and thousands of wild caught Phelsumas have been exported, and this together with the destruction of natural habitats,  many species are now at the edge of extinction. A future goal and dream would be to have a worldwide database, runed by a selected group of breeders. This database should hold information on bloodlines and breedingresults. All hatchlings produced would get there own id-number. Behind this id you should be able to find all neccesary information about this animal. This would be the only way to maintaine a stable population of captive bred animales for the hobby in the future.We no longer can or should depend on wildcaught animales to get fresh bloodlines or cheep animales for the pet trade. It would also be one way to show the public that there are people keeping reptiles, that are seriously interested in the future of  there hobby and the animales involved.

 
Projects 
During year 2000 we were contacted by Mr. Richard Gibson at Jersey Zoo, regarding a planned breedingproject with Phelsuma klemmeri. The plan was to at first involve 6 Zoo:s in a closed studbook program with this specie. Each Zoo would obtain two pairs from as many different bloodlines as possible. That made a total of 24 animales needed. Our job was to convince privat breeders to donate  animales for the project. In early spring 2001, 24 animales were sent to Tim Skelton at Bristol Zoo gardens. Half of these were donated by us, and the other half came from breeders within Interessengruppe Phelsuma ( see link page). From Bristol and Tim ( who works as project coordinator) two pairs each was sent to London Zoo, Manchester Museum, Jersey Zoo, Chester Zoo and  Paignton Zoo. This year some of the specimens have started to produce offspring. These will in the future be placed at other Zoo:s and institutions that wants to take part in the project.

 
Breedingprojects: 
Two of the rarest Phelsumas in both the wild and in captivity are Phelsuma inexpectata and Phelsuma guimbeaui rosagularis. Only a small group of animales exist in captive care. Together with  two German breeders who together with us keep these species, big efforts have been made to build up a stable population that regularily produce offspring. The original animales that was wildcaught was very hard to maintain and gave very few offspring. Today we have F3 animales. Captive bred animales from generation F1-F3 have proven to be easier to keep and they also breed moore regularily. Normally a female produce 6-9 eggs between april and september. Today we have a population of  12 adults from P.inexpectata and 15 from P.guim.rosagularis. There still is one problem to solve, and that is the fact that it is very hard to hatch males from both species. Very few males are hatched no matter the incubationtemperature. Lots of experiments    on different temperatures have been made, including both constant and flucturating temps. I hope that we in the future will be able to produce both males and females in order to give moore serious breeders the chance to keep and breed these wonderful Phelsumas.

 Copyright © 2002-2008. Magnus Forsberg Sweden.