My New Garter Group

Ever since I lost Draco and Demigod, I've been on the lookout for more garters. Just lazily looking mostly. But the person who was caring for Draco, Demigod, and Bud offered to send me 3 Plains garters to help with their loss. I got 3 female Plains, 2 of which were gravid at the time of arriving. I've had them a little more than a month now, and there are no visible health issues.

The smallest one, Freya. She absolutely guzzles worms, and seems to enjoy silversides as well. I have yet to get her to take any ASF, but I'll keep trying.
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Check out that iridescence!
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Leeloo, the middle child. She's the dullest one (in color) of the trio, but has a nice bold pattern. She is also the pickiest eater of the three, but I managed to get her to take an ASF finally. ;) No go on the silversides, and even earthworms I sometimes have an issue getting her to take. Maybe that will change now that she's clear of babies, but even right after birth I could only get her to take two small worms. These pics are of her in shed, but now that she's given birth, and once she eats a few good meals, I'll get some update pics.

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Summer, the largest of the 3, and subsequently probably the one with more babies in her. She is a beast with food, and took minimal encouraging to get onto ASF. It was as simple as heavily scenting an ASF with the worms, and then tonging both of them together. She accidentally grabbed the ASF, and then she'd take them unscented no problem. I have also gotten her to take silversides, though she's less fond of them than the worms and ASF. She has refused all types of food for the past 20 days, so I'm really hoping she pops soon. Leeloo refused food only once before she gave birth, and went less than 10 days between meals. But, I'm thinking Leeloo just has more babies and thus "ran out of room" quicker. Hopefully it's not a sign of anything worrisome.

Pic from arrival:
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Check out that baby bump. She's slightly bigger now.
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One of the females, Leeloo, gave birth sometime last night. She had 19 little babies, and I didn't find a single stillborn anywhere. I have yet to try to feed them, but I'll be attempting within the next few days. They're active and don't appear to have any defects from a cursory look, but I'll look closely at each individual once I start separating them out into their feeding containers.

Once the other female, Summer, gives birth, I'll post a separate thread to track their litters. :)

I also have a 1:2 2020 trio of poss het T+ Plains garters on the way that I'll post here once they're paid off and have arrived. I'm also considering still looking for checkereds, but I'll hold off for now before I make any more decisions.

I got my wild garter rehab to switch to frozen pinkies pretty easily (since worms don't have sufficient calcium) by thawing the pinky overnight in a tiny tupperware (or bag) in the fridge with a couple of worms. Then I took it out of the fridge and did the normal slow thaw. Wriggling the pinky with tongs to simulate movement and she took to it perfectly. I tend to give her a worm as dessert though. Now I don't have to scent them or wriggle them at all. Best of luck!!

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Originally Posted by Namea

I got my wild garter rehab to switch to frozen pinkies pretty easily (since worms don't have sufficient calcium) by thawing the pinky overnight in a tiny tupperware (or bag) in the fridge with a couple of worms. Then I took it out of the fridge and did the normal slow thaw. Wriggling the pinky with tongs to simulate movement and she took to it perfectly. I tend to give her a worm as dessert though. Now I don't have to scent them or wriggle them at all. Best of luck!!

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I've gotten 2 of the 3 adults to take f/t rodents, and have experience with picky snakes. I'm not too worried about Freya, I'm sure I'll get her there. I'm going to try her on some smaller ASF, too, and see if that helps. The other two are quite a bit bigger than her, and the hoppers may just be a tad intimidating.

The babies on the other hand, I have no clue how they're going to take to food, so we'll see. lol They're just too cute, I'm really looking forward to feeding day!

Plains garter babies are the best eaters 90% of my litters take to food a few days after birth. Best garter snake to raise up imo

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Originally Posted by royzft201

Plains garter babies are the best eaters 90% of my litters take to food a few days after birth. Best garter snake to raise up imo

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I started with worms. Only 6 ate immediately, but I got another 6 to eat setting them aside for awhile. The remaining 7 have yet to eat. I'll be trying those 7 again today, before I feed the others again I think. I'll be doing one more session of worms, and then I'll try on ASF parts. Still waiting on Summer to drop.

They are certainly exciting! So far this is my only experience with newborn snakes, let alone garters, so I have little to compare to. XD But they're all quite spunky and insanely cute, and once I get all of them eating, I can enjoy them even more.

Try guppies if available they go crazy for them. When the stubborn eaters just wont take worms that usually works.

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Originally Posted by royzft201

Try guppies if available they go crazy for them. When the stubborn eaters just wont take worms that usually works.

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If ASF parts and silverside pieces don’t work I’ll try that. That should still be less than a week since they were born. I hear that rodent pieces can be the most successful from the start, so I’ll try that next. And I may consider guppies first before the silverside pieces if I can find them small enough, but I’m not sure I can. I was considering raising guppies in the future, but can’t do that where I live atm.


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Guppies just get the natural feeding frenzy going also hilarious watching them fish them up. Lots of fun

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Here are some updated pictures of Leeloo. :) Any baby updates will now be in the thread for their litter. I also have the new trio arriving next week, and I can post them here when they arrive.

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And here you can see that brown color she's got to her. Her stripe is very dull, but she has a pretty almost army green background. (She has a greenish tint to her that didn't show up well in the photos.)

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Awesome snakes! :gj:

Congrats Cloud, on the new garter group! They look amazing! Consider some ZooMed reptile vitamin powder to dust whatever you are feeding to the little ones. It can also be beneficial for the adults like twice a month or so.

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Originally Posted by Albert Clark

Congrats Cloud, on the new garter group they look amazing! Consider some ZooMed reptile vitamin powder to dust whatever you are feeding to the little ones. It can also be beneficial for the adults like twice a month or so.

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Thanks! I’m really excited about them. The new trio will be cool, too, and help me keep the genes varied. Poss het T+ Plains, which I can’t find much pricing info on, so hopefully I can learn more about the market on them by the time I can breed them.

Considering the adults are eating ASF and fish, do you think the powder is necessary for them? I do plan on offering the vitamins since it doesn’t seem I’m going to have the litters switched over any time soon. :/ At least the boa babies will be large enough to take whole rodents if they insist on live. Lol


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Because we are using frozen thawed parts, it’s the freezing part that diminishes and or eliminates some of the available vitamins. So occasionally offering powdered vitamins sprinkled lightly over the food items can help. It certainly doesn’t need to be done regularly with each feeding. I would say weekly for the babies and bi monthly for adults unless you are supplementing with live feedings.

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Originally Posted by Albert Clark

Because we are using frozen thawed parts, it’s the freezing part that diminishes and or eliminates some of the available vitamins. So occasionally offering powdered vitamins sprinkled lightly over the food items can help. It certainly doesn’t need to be done regularly with each feeding. I would say weekly for the babies and bi monthly for adults unless you are supplementing with live feedings.

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I breed my own feeders, and often give them fresh-killed. I try to avoid live except in the case of unestablished babies that need that jump in their appetite. But I’ll keep that in mind! I never give my other snakes vitamins so it never crossed my mind for garters if they’re eating vertebrates.


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Here are the new ones! Looks like one of them are in shed. They all ate the mix of worm and ASF pieces, but I think I underestimated how much they all could eat. Lol Hopefully my ASF will have more pinks soon, they may be big enough to eat day olds whole. :O If not, it won’t be long.

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I’m starting to see why Summer is so much larger. Lmao She just doesn’t stop when it comes to food (minus while gravid and a few weeks after birth). She ate two weaned ASF 3 days before I went to feed Freya and Leeloo - who refused to eat when Summer did. Summer and Lee were hidden away so I figured it was safe to give Freya a worm. I was wrong. Summer came out of one of the hides, mouth gaping and stole Freya’a worm, inhaled it, and began gaping for more. I picked the rascal up and put her in a bucket so the other two could have some peace. Freya and Lee started refusing food as the weather was getting colder, while Summer was still devouring food. We rearranged the house to fit all the animals in one room, so they are now warm again and this was the first time I got them to eat after a few attempts. I don’t plan on brumation until the temps are reliably cold, and until then I want them eating well.

I managed to get Freya and Lee to take 3 worms each, and then let Summer finish off the worms. Lol She ate 4.5 of them. [emoji849] What a pig!

The poss het T+ trio is still doing well, and I let them stuff themselves until I think they have a good bulge once a week or so. I think the smaller female is starting to catch up with the biggest now, and even the male isn’t as easily spotted by size.

At some point I’ll get an update of them, just don’t know how I’ll go about a photo shoot yet.


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I have officially sold all but the 2.2 holdback groups from Lee and Summer's litters, as well as sold Lee and Freya. That leaves me with Summer, the in house babies, and the poss het T+/caramel trio. Summer is starting to feel the effects of the winter, and is only really wanting earthworms atm, and I plan to offer some silversides next since she's been refusing the mice and rat pinks.

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I ended up naming Lee's daughter Schnell, she's the big and pale one. She's typically a confidant feeder, and doesn't skip as many meals as the other female.

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The female I kept from Summer I named Tsunade. She's a shy feeder, typically needs to be put in a separate feeding container overnight to eat. She's missed feedings in the past because I didn't have anywhere to keep her for hours at a time, but hasn't missed a meal since I started this.

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Both of the males I kept are from Summer's litter, I didn't feel like any of the males from Lee matched what I was aiming for in my garters.

The bigger pale male I named Ulquiorra. He's got interesting slate eyes. He's not as pale as his brother that I wanted to keep back, but he was the brightest and most contrasted from litter next to that one. I also like how wide his back stripe is.

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The other male from Summer I named Aizen. He's another shy eater, and also needs to be separated and left alone overnight to eat.

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This group of babies are a lot pickier/finicky than the poss het T+ trio, so they're on the smaller side, but hopefully with the current set up they'll skip fewer meals. They still don't eat as much food at once as the others, but as long as they're eating their appetites may increase later on. I'll also be reintroducing worms and silverside chunks now that I'm not feeding them in deli cups and have them on actual substrate. Worms were just too messy to feed in the deli cup, and then they made more of a mess of their paper towels than on pinks.

As far as the het T+ trio, the male has lagged way behind the other two due to a hard couple months where he was refusing any kind of food. Even though I was force feeding him the same amount of food he's eating now, he also just wasn't maintaining weight or growing. Now that he's eating on his own, for some reason that alone is allowing him to gain more weight back and begin to grow. He just decided one day to go from force feeding to assist feeding, and then after a couple more feedings, started eating on his own. Not really sure what it was about. I do sometimes have to feed him separately from the rest of trio and leave him overnight, but he will eat in the cage most of the time.

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The biggest girl still has a bit of a mean streak, and is rather flighty. She's devouring like 4 day old mouse pinks a sitting now, so she may be able to move onto day old rat pinks soon.

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The smaller girl goes through periods where she might eat 1-3 pinks at a time, but has been eating 3-4 the past couple feedings. She also skips meals here or there, but nothing like the 2.2 from the WC adults.

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It has been a long time since I've had any snake (they weren't garters, btw) that would initially only feed in a small separate container & left overnight. But happily, they usually get a lot better after only a few meals taken that way, & started eating as they should- I hope yours all transition quickly. It's as if they suddenly realize "hey, food IS good!" :D Sounds like you have a lot of different personalities to contend with, but they're awfully cute, I gotta say.

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

It has been a long time since I've had any snake (they weren't garters, btw) that would initially only feed in a small separate container & left overnight. But happily, they usually get a lot better after only a few meals taken that way, & started eating as they should- I hope yours all transition quickly. It's as if they suddenly realize "hey, food IS good!" :D Sounds like you have a lot of different personalities to contend with, but they're awfully cute, I gotta say.

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These guys are over a year old now, and have always been iffy eaters (except for the poss het T+ male who only recently started being picky). My old albino checkered took 4 years before he felt comfortable enough to take food off the tongs. [emoji23] Before that, I had to dig him out of the bedding, set the prey down, and literally leave the room for him to eat. He would let the pink rot if I didn’t dig him out. Then all of a sudden one day he decided me and the tongs weren’t scary anymore. Lol So at this point I just figure garters are gonna be that way and let them do their thing.

Yes, they are! Despite being finicky eaters, Summer and my CB babies are a lot more amenable to handling than the CBB poss het T+. The trio typically runs in terror from me and flings musk everywhere (plus the biting from Abzan), the WC adults never musked me once and the babies have stopped musking for quite awhile now.


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Isn't it amazing what we "snake-lovers" put ourselves through to keep them happy, or just eating & alive? :rofl: Talk about patience...

And they show such "gratitude" too. I love the hand-chomping photo above. :snake2:

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

Isn't it amazing what we "snake-lovers" put ourselves through to keep them happy, or just eating & alive? :rofl: Talk about patience...

And they show such "gratitude" too. I love the hand-chomping photo above. :snake2:

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Right. [emoji23] Those garter litters got so much labor put into them. [emoji849] And yeah, she’s hilarious. She bites me whether she’s in shed or not, just gotta handle her more.


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Originally Posted by CloudtheBoa

Right. [emoji23] Those garter litters got so much labor put into them. [emoji849] And yeah, she’s hilarious. She bites me whether she’s in shed or not, just gotta handle her more.


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So much for gratitude. :rofl:

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

So much for gratitude. :rofl:

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Right. lmao I enjoy it all, though. :D

Unfortunately I ended up losing one of the females from the CB group, I suspect cannibalism. The one female was suspiciously lumpy despite no meal. [emoji28] I then also lost the pale male right before my move to SC, so I will never have a chance to find him again. I forgot to latch his feeding enclosure, and he got out. The second time he specifically got out, the first time he got pretty messed up by one of our cats. Healed up just fine and I thought that would be the last of it. Nope. [emoji20]

So, of the CB group, I just have the 1.1 unrelated pair. Those 2 are doing very well, although they remain fairly picky and often refuse to eat anything offered. As such, they’re still fairly small, though the male is bigger. I do need to get recent pics though. They are both eating 2 fuzzy mice each, preferably every week, but I’m lucky if they take that once a month.

I also found one of the males in the poss het caramel group passed away a week or two ago. [emoji20] The female is huge now, same size as Summer the big WC. She’s eating rat pups, and I also need a recent pic as she’s grown a ton since her last pics.

I also got a trio of checkered garters I haven’t added to this group yet. I started out with a normal dh albino granite from a high green female. Gorgeous girl with popping colors. Unfortunately, she escaped soon after my move and I haven’t seen her since. The building is too far away for a wifi camera, and I’ve been ruffling through things and lifting debris around the outside of the building to no avail. She’s been gone a few months now.

I also have an albino granite that went missing for about 4 months before my move. I didn’t close her feeding container properly [emoji58], so now I also latch the containers inside their normal enclosure as a back up measure. I caught her on camera a couple weeks after she got out, but the camera was set to motion tracking and I missed my shot. I kept loo for her, though, constantly going underneath the trailer with a head lamp and looking under debris and up inside the underside where I saw her. I didn’t see her again until a few days before our move was finalized, and she was crawling out of the side of the trailer to get a drink during a downpour. She’s stayed put since and is now exploding in growth. She was smaller than the other 2 when I got her, and now she’s bigger than the other of the remaining 2.

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The last of the trio is a dh albino axanthic from the new project being proven out. He came to me willing to eat mice, but 2 feedings in and he stopped taking them. So I went to offering tilapia twice a week, but now that he’s lagging behind the female, I’m assist feeding him mouse pink parts, and maybe he’ll go back to eating them. I hate assist feeding with a passion, but with him being a carrier for a potential new morph, I’m not going to let him lag behind a few years like I normally do if I can help it.

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Then again, I am debating on if I want to keep breeding garters. They are escaping way too frequently, and are the only snakes I have escaping constantly.


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Those are gorgeous snakes- sorry to hear about your losses though, & yeah, they're such slim & tiny snakes, they make great escape artists. Kinda picky eaters, that's a hassle too. Still I hope you have better luck from now on.

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

Those are gorgeous snakes- sorry to hear about your losses though, & yeah, they're such slim & tiny snakes, they make great escape artists. Kinda picky eaters, that's a hassle too. Still I hope you have better luck from now on.

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Thanks. It definitely got really disheartening to constantly be down a garter for one reason or another. I need to find a rack system that can house them. [emoji23]

And yesss, so picky! Even good eaters eventually go through a picky period. My sanity can’t handle constantly assist feeding, so I usually wait for them to pick back up and go back to growing. Even if it takes a couple years, they get there.


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