Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've read the posts about switching garters from fish to mice, but i have a somewhat unique problem: The garters around here dont seem to eat fish. I've try it several times with several garters, and all they eat are worms and local amphibians. I just recently caught a very nicely patterned eastern, and would like to switch it to mice. Please help...

-Me

Man I'll tell you the problem I had when I got my first easterns. They would only eat toads, no fish! I had to go out every night or so to collect a couple toads, but then I figured what the hell collect them by the masses before winter. I purchased brown mice and rubbed the toad alond the body of the mouse to give it the sent and it worked for one of my snakes, but the other stil refused. I herd about chicken broth being fed to ball pythons and other pythons that would not eat, so I dipped a mouse in and before i could put it down that baby was in the Garters mouth! Some seem to like it and some dont, its all about them. Try the frog thing it might work.

Lu

I have two yearling garters that have been eating bait store minnows really well. I also have a yearling snow corn that was a problem eater until I figured out that she could not resist pinkies that I had cut the heads off. Now...one of my garters is eating the cut off heads. Talk about not wasting anything!!

n/p

I've had god luck switching them using the worms..if they are chowing down on worms, scent the pinkies with worms....works great for me!

What size should i get for a two foot plus snake? large pinkies or fuzzies? It ate a huge Slimy salamander today. at first it kept ignoring no matter what i did, because the sal wouldnt move. Then, i put the garter back in its cage (I was trying to feed it in a smaller, seperate container) and tossed in the slimy. It started to run away immediately. The garter tasted the air, turned in the sals direction, and as soon as it saw movement it nailed it. I think i might try to mimic that with a scented mouse soon. It was almost scary how hard it it that 6-7 inc slimy.

I would give him fuzzies, or meybe even f/t young adults. I have a 26" wandering garter that sucked down one of my adult breeder mice that died during the night!!!! Nice thing is I didn't have to scent it either, she just sucks them down!

The thing i do to switch is use feeding tongs. all you do is get the mouses tail and move it in the front of the snakes eyesight so it scences movment and takes off.
my wild 3 day captive wandering garter consumed two fuzzies as fast as a fuzzy can be eaten.
My other garter ate one fuzzy but was a little more nervous.
I wonder why my cb garter was more nervous than the wild snaker for mice

Where i saved the snake from the cat there is a gully near and thats where the garters come from around here. In the gully there are no anphibians and no fish so i guess they eat rodents (there wandering garters.) Wait what would the offspring eat.

The young would probably eat worms and slugs along wuith baby rodents. I got a wc female wandering garter from Idaho, she is 26 inches long and sucks mice down like crazy. One of my adult breeder mice died during the night, dropped it in the cage and she hit it as soon as it hit the bottom of the cage!!