Help with garter please

[sunset]

I am taking care of my little brothers garter snake (he's 9, and parents have joint custody, so he's not home enough to take care of it, blah blah) and it has been eating goldfish, and I REALLY want to convert it to mice, or anything better than goldies. I tried dripping fish 'juice" on a pinky mouse, and he showed no interest whatsoever. I tried thawed out smelt pieces, and he picked it up as if to eat it, and then dropped it. I even put a few pieces of it in the bowl with a few goldfish, to get him in 'eating mode', and he did the same thing. Any ideas?

[Sean_.E.]

well u could atleast get him on a fish that is a little more healthy like platties or minnows. Maybe u could try that and the go to frozen fish...don't really know about converting but try to get him on the above fish.

[fr0glet]

Garters don't eat mice. hth.

[rattekonigin]

Ya, garter snakes eat fish...and, I think, also small lizards and frogs...

[peregrinefalcon]

Garters do eat mice Froglet, ask one of the many people who has a garter that eats mice.
hth,
Adam

ps. Sunset, I don't know what kind of garter you have but maybe try earthworms.

[BurmBaroness]

Mice are not the proper diet for garter snakes, and switching a non-rodent eating snake to a rodent diet can cause problems with the snake's health. Their systems were not made to digest rodents, they were made to digest fish, worms, and some eat crickets as well. I would recommend that you just keep feeding the fish, but go to a more nutritious type as suggested above.

[fr0glet]

Adam, do your garters eat snakes? If so, how long and how is their health?

I apologize, I should have included "naturally" or "in the wild" or something.

Thanks for the intelligent additions BurmBaroness.

[Herpkingdom]

This is a diet which I have used over the years.

Fish (goldfish, platys, guppies, etc)
Worms (big fat earthworms, and such)
and they will eat pinkie mice.

It is better to vary the diet and not to feed too many pinkie mice. I always fed my garters fish and worms and once a month I would toss in a pinkie.

But a strict diet of just pinkies is not recommended. Garter snakes digestive system is not geared to handle a strict diet of pinkies. But I you want to feed one a month, make sure you wake some extra time before feeding again as it takes longer to digest the pinkie than it does a fish.

[eyespy]

Originally posted by BurmBaroness
Mice are not the proper diet for garter snakes, and switching a non-rodent eating snake to a rodent diet can cause problems with the snake's health. Their systems were not made to digest rodents, they were made to digest fish, worms, and some eat crickets as well. I would recommend that you just keep feeding the fish, but go to a more nutritious type as suggested above.

I'm afraid I couldn't disagree more strongly. Most Thamnophis species are opportunistic feeders whose natural diets include rodents, birds, amphibians, fish, carrion, and invertebrates. They digest mice extremely well and tend to live longer and healthier lives on a rodent diet than a fish only diet. Higher quality calcium in the rodents is one suspected reason, as is a greater variety of amino acids and minerals in the rodent diet. There is also a greatly reduced chance of parasites. Garters on a fish diet are usually riddled with flukes which can easily penetrate the lung and cause respiratory disease.

I've worked with rescued garter snakes since 1978 and far more snakes have taken to rodents than crickets in my experience. I've had maybe 5 or 6 in that whole time period who've readily accepted crickets. There has only been 1 species that I've not been able to get to take rodents, the western ribbon.

If the garter has had nothing but goldfish for an extended period conversion can be very slow. Try doling out just one fish at a time into the water bowl, and after 2 or 3 goldfish throw in a goldfish-scented platy or minnow. Once you've got the snake accepting different types of fish, try throwing in a frozen/thawed pinkie well scented with goldfish. I keep a goldfish carcass in a baggie in my freezer that I can use over and over for scenting. I find it works better than a live fish as garters will often choose a several days dead fish over a living one in the wild.

Even with such a powerful scent, though, the conversion process can be slow for an adult snake.

[Flo]

I fully agree with eyespy. I would add that a mouse diet is way better than a fish diet for garters. Fish is loaded with parasites and can lead to all sorts of problems for your snake. In my collection, the only snakes that have had chronic health problems or that have died were either exclusive live fish eaters or had had fish in their diet at some point in time.

On top of eyespy's suggestion, I would also try feeding your snake earthworms (as somebody mentioned). Since it's been used to eating moving prey, it might react to the worm moving around. If it doesn't go for it, you can try to rub the worm against a live or dead fish (whatever your snake is used to eating at the time you try).

For more information on garters and diet, a good site to visit is:
http://www.mcwetboy.com/gartercare/

If you need any more help, please let us know.

And good luck.

[peregrinefalcon]

Froglet, my garter snake does not eat snakes, but it does eat mice :p (I know thats what you meant to say). He has been eating them for a few months and I notice a rapid growth increase even after one pinky. I also feed him earthworms and guppies. Unfortunetaly he escaped and I hope I'll be able to find him :(
Adam

[Tim_Cranwill]

It has been said by some "experienced" keepers, such as Dr. Alan Francis, that a diet based mostly on "oily" fish is not suitable for Garters who have some predisposition to thiamine deficiency. Those fish lack vitamin B1 and contain an enzyme called thiaminase which is believed to destroy thiamine. It is suspected that this has in fact led to the deaths of some garter snakes. Some fish to watch for are; whitebait, mackerel, spratt and herring. Just something to think about.... :)

I have gotten garters to thrive (survive and reproduce) with a diet of almost exclusively frogs (from the appropriate locale) and bait worms with the occasional mouse thrown in. If you choose to feed your garter worms, make sure they are NOT worms which have a red stripe on them that you may find at some bait shops. These worms are toxic to your snakes.

Overall, I'd recommend you try a diet rich in variety. Garters are one of a few snakes who will accept such a wide variety of food, so why limit their food items to just one thing, be it worms, fish or mice.

Good luck! Here are some links to a few good care sheets...
http://www.gartersnake.co.uk/
http://www.thamnophis.com/artic22.htm
http://www.anapsid.org/gartcare.html

[eyespy]

If available, I find canned salmon to be a great food for switching diets. They seem to love the taste and the odor, and there's always some skin in the can you can save for scenting other food items. There's no thiaminase in salmon so it's safe that way, but you do need to offer either calcium-rich foods or use a light dusting of a supplement.

It only works if your snake will take non-moving food items. Most do it readily but once in awhile you'll find a snake that's stuck on motion.

I just throw little chunks of the salmon in their water dish and most go nuts.

[eyespy]

I avoid a frog diet whenever possible, the parasite load is far higher than even feeder goldfish, and the strains of parasite are more likely to thrive in a snake.

If I absolutely have a stubborn frog-eating garter I use only tadpoles that I've bred myself and treated with Flagyll and Droncit.

[Nanashi04]

When I had a garter, I fed her on mostly minnows and earthworms... basically things avalible at the local bait shop... She seemed to do very well on that..

[Jonathan Crowe]

Captive garter snakes do not have the same resistance to disease and parasites that wild garter snakes do, and a wild garter's diet is chock-full of parasites that they normally tolerate well enough. Fish, frogs and earthworms all contain internal parasites -- but then so do wild mice. Feeding wild mice to a captive-bred corn snake is an awfully good way to get it sick; it's the same principle when feeding a garter's traditional diet to a garter. The difference is that there isn't the same availability of clean food items -- i.e., there are no fish/frog equivalents of lab/domestic mice.

So what do you do? As Flo and others pointed out, feeding live fish can cause all sorts of problems -- even if the fish doesn't have the thiaminase enzyme that destroys Vitamin B1. Feeder fish are chock-full of parasites, and that goes for goldfish, too, which are nutritionally junk fish at that. Frozen fish from the supermarket doesn't have the same problems, except that it's not nutritionally complete: the fillet doesn't contain the nutrients that the head and guts would. A diet of ocean perch, while inexpensive and safe from the point of view of thiaminase and internal parasites, wouldn't be a good idea.

Earthworms are usually a pretty good bet, except that the places they're collected from -- golf courses, for example -- are hardly examples of clean, pesticide-free locales. So you're running into risks there as well. Now I've used bait-store nightcrawlers with no apparent problems, but I know full well that those problems may present themselves down the line.

When you consider all the problems inherent in using fish and worms -- and frogs, with their parasite issues, which would otherwise be ideal -- you can see why many garter snake keepers opt for mice. Mice are nutritionally complete, as any corn snake or kingsnake keeper will tell you. And mice are vertebrates, just like frogs, so to say that a garter snake's system can't handle them is overstating things just a tad, and isn't really an informed opinion. Even earthworm specialists like Butler's garter snakes will take mice happily -- http://www.mcwetboy.com/articles/butlers.phtml -- and it's been documented that the diet of adult female garter snakes on the prairies -- wandering, plains, red-sided garters -- is almost exclusively rodents. They need the nutrition.

Finally, all I can say is to look at the experience of garter keepers who've been at it for a while. I've had seven of my garter snakes between 2.5 and three years on an almost exclusive mouse diet: eastern, red-sided, wandering and Butler's garters. They're doing really well. The snakes that were harder to convert to mice -- a melanistic eastern and an eastern blackneck -- ate mostly fish and have since died.

As for converting, almost all of my wandering, red-sided and eastern babies took UNSCENTED pinky parts the first time they were offered. In many cases, it depends on the species or locality from which they or their parents were collected -- some are just more die-hard fish-eaters than others.

Here's my care sheet again:
http://www.mcwetboy.com/gartercare/

[Tim_Cranwill]

Thanks for the great info and care sheet Johnathan! :)

[eyespy]

If your local supermarket or fish shop fillets their own fish, it's very easy to ask them to save heads and entrails for you. Many don't even charge, they just throw the stuff out normally. You can freeze them and mix it in with f/t fish such as ocean perch, trout, etc. for a more nutritious meal with reduced parasite risk.

[Tim_Cranwill]

I've had Garters go crazy over whole trout blended with calciaum powder and gelatin. You can keep it in the freezer and then thaw what you plan on feeding. The gelatin helps it somewhat to hold it's shape. The snakes were VERY into this food.

[eyespy]

Never thought to add gelatin, very clever!

[Tim_Cranwill]

Very clever indeed! But I can't take credit for it :).

I got the recipe from Alan Francis' web page... http://www.gartersnake.co.uk/

[eyespy]

Hee hee, I've poured over that website for ages but I didn't remember that! I'd never tried his recipe as I already had so many different foods in the house that my garters took readily.

Next time I'm running low on frozen fish and mice maybe I'll give it a try.

[Tim_Cranwill]

Just one warning....

Chop the heads into SMALL pieces. I fried my blender trying to blen large pieces... :D

[sunset]

Hey, thanks for all the info guys, but I was really wondering if anyone had any tips for converting him. He wont eat anything that is not alive and moving. I even tried a live pinky that I rubbed a fish on, and he showed no interest. I know mice are 100X better than goldies, I heard about the vitamin problems, but I just really need some ideas for converting him to mice.

[eyespy]

It's mostly just being patient and offering new foods in different ways. Try scented vs. unscented, in the water dish vs. dry, mixed with goldfish vs. by itself.

Foods with the strongest smell seem to be accepted more readily, so frozen/thawed fish doesn't go over as big as one of the oily canned fish like salmon, at least in my experience.

Cranwill, blenders are for wimps!! I just get out my cleaver and hack and whack away!

[sunset]

Thanks!:D

[eyespy]

Oh, and I haven't found a garter or ribbon yet that didn't like Fancy Feast Ocean Whitefish Fillet canned catfood!

I don't normally plug brand names but this brand has really worked well for me. Sometimes it takes them awhile to get up the nerve to try it but once they do they love it!

[Auddi01]

I have 15 garter snakes, i like to feed them a variety so that they get as much nutrition and differnet types of vitamins as possible. I feed them earthworms, minnows, and Mice to the larger ones. there is nothing wrong with feeding the garters mice, it is cheaper if you breed them yourself becuase you will always have too many. i have to breed mice for my corns so i have a surplus of mice therefore i feed them to the garters, mie are wuiet nutritional for them also