In my experience, the most easy to find and cheapest food for gartersnakes are nightcrawlers available at many gas stations/grocery stores or at the very least the nearest bait shop.

That being said, I can't think off the top of my head of a place to get cheap Red-backed Salamanders (as many herpetologists would now have you call them). Depending on your state laws, you could in theory get them wild caught since they are the most abundant vertebrate in a northeastern hardwood forest. To be perfectly honest though, I'd go with the nightcrawlers. They eat dirt and require nearly zero care to keep alive. Red-backed Salamanders need to be fed small invertebrates, require special care and environmental conditions, and much more space since they inhabit a two-dimensional world. The are also smaller than night crawlers. Lastly, you can cut a nightcrawler in half and the front will still live so if you can more precisely control the quantity given. If your snakes are small that's not a problem because you can just buy regular earthworms or "red wigglers" instead. Good luck!

Just curious, why did you decide on Red-backed Salamanders?

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