what do garter snakes eat

Discussion in 'Other Colubrids' started by macdaddy00, Sep 11, 2004.

  1. macdaddy00

    macdaddy00 Embryo

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    what are the best things for garter snakes? i found this one under some house siding.there were about four of them.
     
  2. JEFFREH

    JEFFREH Administrator

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  3. susyq

    susyq Member

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    Feeding
    What to Feed Unless you have a garter snake that eats mice, you must feed your garter snake a varied diet to ensure complete nutrition. Mice represent complete nutrition, but other foods are
    deficient in some manner or other and must be fed in combination to ensure a complete diet.
    A young garter snake that is not eating pinky mice or pinky parts may be fed a combination of
    earthworms (cut into appropriately sized pieces if you’re using large nightcrawlers), feeder
    guppies or platies and, if the snake will accept it, pieces of fish fillet. Supplement the fish and
    worms occasionally. This diet does put the snake at risk of a parasitic infection; ideally, it
    should be converted to a mouse-based diet as soon as possible. Begin with pinky parts if the
    snake is too small for pinky mice; scent the mice to encourage the snake to feed if necessary.
    Once converted to mice, a garter snake should eat them most of the time; worms and fish
    can be optional treats, if you wish.
    How Much & How Often How often you feed your snake depends on what you feed it, and how much depends on the size of the snake. Worm eaters need to be fed more often than fish eaters, which in turn need to be fed more often than mouse eaters. Worm eaters should be fed twice weekly, fish eaters can be fed every five to six days or so, and mouse eaters every week. Very young garter snakes can eat a bit more frequently than that; for example, they could probably eat every second day on an earthworm diet.
    A rigid schedule is not strictly necessary, though it’s easier for the keeper to remember.
    Snakes that eat a varied diet can be kept on a constant schedule, despite the different recommended intervals I just mentioned. Don’t agonize too much about the schedule unless you
    have very young snakes; it’s very hard to starve a snake.
    You should feed your snake enough to leave a visible bulge, but not so much that the snake is
    going to burst. A baby snake should get two or three small earthworms collected from the
    garden, or one-quarter to one-third of a large bait store nightcrawler, or a few feeder guppies,
    or one large feeder platy, for example. Smaller, more frequent meals are more easily digested than mammoth, infrequent meals. In general, baby snakes should be fed frequently.
    It’s hard to make fatal mistakes, and through trial and error you will figure out how much and
    how often based on how big the snake looks after a meal, and how fast that meal is digested.
    Sometimes the snake itself will tell you: if an ordinarily tame snake nips at your fingers when
    you reach into its cage, it may simply be very hungry.
    It is possible to overfeed your snake. Since overfeeding causes obesity and reduces the
    snake’s lifespan, it should be avoided. Do not feed your snake every day or it will become
    obese. It’s harder to overfeed on a pure earthworm diet, but easier on a pure mouse diet,
    because mice are more nutritious than worms. Again, it’s quite difficult to overfeed a baby
    garter snake.
    Note that a snake’s metabolism goes up and down with the temperature: a snake kept in a
    house without air conditioning during a warm summer will get hungrier faster than a snake
    kept at cooler temperatures.
    Frogs and Toads In the wild, most adult garter snakes feed preferentially on anurans (frogs and toads), and in an ideal situation this would make up the bulk of their diets. But collecting frogs as food for your garter snake is difficult to justify given declining amphibian populations worldwide, and wild-caught frogs and tadpoles are quite likely to transmit a host of parasites to your snake.
    All things considered, frogs shouldn’t be used as garter snake food unless the snake refuses to
    eat anything else.
    Earthworms There are some concerns about parasite transmission with earthworms as well, and road collected worms may harbour all sorts of toxins. Some species of snake will want these more than anything else, and most baby snakes will prefer earthworms as well. Ribbon snakes and some western aquatic species won’t eat them, though. Worms collected from your garden
    (dew worms) will be eaten with particular enthusiasm, and nightcrawlers (Lumbricus terrestris)
    purchased at a bait store will also suffice. Be careful with nightcrawlers, which are big and muscular: be sure to cut them into small pieces when feeding them to small snakes; they’re strong enough to crawl back out if you’re not careful! Cutting a large nightcrawler into quarters will be enough. Cut them into too-small pieces and the snake may ignore them: they expect their worm prey to twitch a little. Never use red wigglers (Eisenia foetida), which are the worms used in vermicomposting and are sometimes sold as trout bait: they are reportedly toxic, or at least foul-tasting. Worms are also deficient in calcium, though there is some debate about whether this is a cause for concern; as a precaution, if your garter’s diet is mostly worm-based, supplement it
    periodically with calcium.
    Fish Many keepers rely on fish because it’s very easy to find, and because it’s easier to control
    parasites with freezing. But there are some problems with using fish as a food source that lead me to recommend that you not use it unless you absolutely have to. Live fish is advantageous because some garter snakes will refuse to eat anything else. But a regular diet of live feeder fish can expose your snake to several medical problems. Live fish are usually laden with internal parasites that can leave your snake with a persistent infection of roundworms, tapeworms or pinworms, months after its last meal of fish, that can be extremely resistant to treatment. Certain kinds of live fish can pose additional risks. Goldfish should be avoided at all costs; it’s essentially a junk fish with poor nutritive value. And other species of fish contain an enzyme called thiaminase, which destroys vitamin B1 (thiamin) and gives your snake a potentially fatal vitamin deficiency (see below). As a result, I do not recommend using live fish unless the snake will not eat anything else, and I recommend against purchasing garter snakes that will only eat live fish. Frozen whole fish, do not present the same problems with parasites (if frozen for more
    than 30 days), but freezing does not destroy thiaminase. Fish fillet is very convenient, because
    it can be bought frozen at the supermarket, but it’s not complete nutrition. A garter that lives on strips of fish fillet misses out on the nutrients found in whole fish, so periodic calcium and vitamin supplementation will be necessary. Fish fillet is safe to use (ocean perch, for example, is known not to contain thiaminase) but it should not be the only item in the snake’s diet. It’s fine in combination with worms or mice.

    hope this helps :)
     

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