RAD House Colubrids update

[RAD House]

I have been meaning to get some updated photos of my colubrids. There have been some great threads of the same nature recently so I finally found the motivation. First up is Maize the sneaky little bugger who disappeared for eight months only to reappear on his own.



Keeping with Rat snakes we have the luecistic black rat snake, Bella Luna.



Next is my chubby Imperial pueblan milk, Del the Funky Lampropeltis.

[RAD House]

Last but not least is the garter coalition. First up is mini Darth the melanistic eastern.



Finally is the psychotic but beautiful Obi, the Cali red sided.

[Humble308]

WOW, that red sided garter is gorgeous. How are the garters compared to other colubrids, I've been toying with the idea of one for awhile.

[Andy_G]

Very nice neon!

Humble, they are eating pooping machines that do best with a varied diet of worms, fish, and the odd rodent. Very rewarding captives though and one of few species that do very well when cohabbed.

[RAD House]

Thanks you two. I agree with everything Andy said, but just wanted to add a few things. First is that they can take some work to get feeding consistently because they seemingly all have different taste, so it takes a bit of experimentation. Also I agree that a varied diet is best some just never take to it. My Cali red sided refused anything but mice. You also need to be careful what you feed them especially certain types of fish can lead to certain types of thiamine deficiencies and neurological issues. In general certain species and even subspecies can have attitudes as difference as night and day. The Cali red sided in particular are known to have bad attitudes, and do better as display animals. My eastern is a very mellow trusting guy, and I have heard this is the same for plains garters(T. radix), checkered garters, and red spotted garters. This is of course just generalizations and not the rule. All in all they are day time active, inquisitive, and pretty comical.