Our Story

Hi! My name is Jen Thompson and I grew up in a home where we had lots of pets. We always had at least one cat and one dog, and have had everything from gerbils to guinea pigs, to finches, ferrets, newts, fish, crayfish, goats, and even a horse. I have kept reptiles, namely geckos and chameleons, but also including snakes, turtles and tortoises, off and on for the past 20+ years.

I also work full time as a microbiologist and Team Lead for the Media Preparation Lab (think petri plates and tubes of bacterial growth and selective media, not news/tv/etc.) at one of the largest public health labs in the world in Austin, TX, and the 2nd largest in the USA after the CDC lab.

I had originally started getting into and wanting to breed leopard and day geckos back in 2007, but life had other ideas. Two kids and more than a decade later, I acquired Auryn, and my love affair with reptiles was reignited. Auryn would be the catalyst that would catapult our hobby for keeping reptiles into breeding them. We now have several adult, subadult and juvenile pairs of gargoyles, leopard geckos, crested geckos, and hognose snakes. We also keep other species of reptiles, invertebrates, a flock of chickens, two ducks, a dog, and three cats.

My mom and 2 kiddos help with all the animal upkeep, so they are very much a part of GwenGecko. We’re just getting started in our journey, come join us!