Who likes big girls?

[Jeff B]

http://gartersnakemorph.com/images/californiared-sidedfemale.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/albinofloridafemale.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/erythristicflamehetalbinofemale.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/granitecheckeredfemale.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/melanisticfemale1.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/snowfemale.jpg

[guidofatherof5]

Oh, my.

Beautiful.

[Invisible Snake]

Nice! All preggers?

[guidofatherof5]

Yep and Jeff is responsible for all of it.:D

[Jeff B]

Yep and Jeff is responsible for all of it.:D Yes they are prego hopefully, I guess I am responsible seeing how I am the CEO of their dating service.

[Jeff B]

http://gartersnakemorph.com/images/quadhetplainsfemale1.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/hypochicagofemale.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/iowahetalbinoredsidedfemale.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/floridahetalbinofemale.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/chicagofemale1.jpghttp://gartersnakemorph.com/images/axanthicplainsfemale.jpg

[BLUESIRTALIS]

Sweet! Looking forward to seeing some baby pics too! Congrats Jeff!!!

[Selkielass]

Wow, gorgeous gals!

[Steveo]

Fatty fatty two-by-four, could not fit inside the door.

What's the third one? She's on fire!

[BLUESIRTALIS]

Third one in the first set of pics is an ery/flame eastern and the third one from the second group of pics is a red sided garter (parietalis) im not 100% sure which one you was talking about since they are both on fire! Lol. If i had to guess though i would say you are talking about the ery/flame eastern!

[Steveo]

Third one in the first set of pics is an ery/flame eastern


Yes! That's what I thought, but she's so red all over that I couldn't tell if she had flame.

[Jeff B]

Yes she is a erythristic flame combo and she is also 100% het Schuett albino too.

[ssssnakeluvr]

Awwesome!!! my het albino plains is getting big.... only one so far. my 3 trios of wandering garters are breeding away! they don't get real fat like other species...

[Eddie]

Jeff
You are about to be over run by babies!! Good luck with them all!!
Ed

[mikem]

good looking girls! lots of babies in your future :cool:

[Jeff B]

Unfortunately my experience is that they won't all pan out. Some just get fat and throw jelly beans and some, throw stills. None the less, hoping for lots of big healthy babies.

[Dan72]

Congrats Jeff, hope you get many babies to keep you busy.

[ConcinusMan]

http://youtu.be/reTx5sqvVJ4

[Selkielass]

Unfortunately my experience is that they won't all pan out. Some just get fat and throw jelly beans and some, throw stills. None the less, hoping for lots of big healthy babies.

Thanks for mentioning this- much is made of garters being 'easy' snakes that 'breed like rabbits' but my experience has been that it's a nowhere near that easy.
Good luck with all your gals.

[Jeff B]

Yeah your welcome, just keeping it real. Anything over 50% of my girls actually have babies and I am happy, also of what comes out of them, if 50% is alive and perfect condition with no defects or kinks I am happy as well. Slugs or jelly beans or unfertilized eggs, and stillbornes and deformaties are a harsh reality and part of the breeding equation sooner or later. Sure anyone can get lucky and have a perfect litter here and there, but that's not how the bigger numbers over time pan out, at least that's been my experience anyway.

[ConcinusMan]

Some just get fat and throw jelly beans and some, throw stills.

Odd. In 25+ years I've never had that happen and 2010 was the first time I had ever got an unfertilized egg and even that was part of a large healthy litter. Stills have happened, yes, but just a few in a normal live litter.

But of course, I've never bred snakes that were result of generations of selective breeding/inbreeding either. Just seems to me that the tendency in captivity is to breed snakes anyway when they have these problems,(just for the sake of preserving the morph even though you're also passing on fertility problems) and especially if you get very few surviving offspring, they get bred whereas in the wild, a snake with fertility problems is not likely to have any of her very few live offspring survive long enough to breed because her numbers are low which greatly reduces or eliminates the chances that any will still be around as adults.

[Jeff B]

Fertility issues occur even with wild caught, and they are certainly not unique to garters, or morphs. So Richard how many litters have you produced in your "25+" years of breeding garters? Must be at least 25 right?

[twgrosmick]

While I will agree with Jeff they are not unique to garters there is certainly a correlation between inbreeding and fertility issues. Morphs have nothing to do with it. The problem comes with inbreeding. Breeding generations of siblings to siblings as opposed to outcrossing and spending a few extra years doing it the right way. Doesn't matter if he has had five or twenty-five litters. The fact of the matter is Jeff that there aren't enough people outcrossing and as a result fertility rates are low and litter sizes are small... It doesn't take years of breeding to understand that...

[snakeman]

The shuett albino have been outcrossed into ten different lines. My fertility rates are great. It's all how you cool your snakes and how long.

[Jeff B]

Tyler, you are really just arguing with yourself. If you read my post I never refute the fact that inbreeding is a compounding factor, nor that it is not an issue in the hobby. Tom, I think that conditioning and brumations could be a factor. Would you mind sharing what your ideal brumation conditions are?

[twgrosmick]

There are breeders that don't brumate at all and have high success rates. I don't see how I am "arguing with myself." You completely ignored the fact in your original post that inbreeding is a factor and you jump right to the defense of "it happens in the wild." In captivity brumation is used as a stimulation to get the breeding process going. Once the courting process is complete its a matter of making sure the proper temperatures are maintained for the female to develop the babies. I hope Mike doesn't mind me mentioning his name, but during his first garter breeding, after little brumation other than tossing them in a box in a "cooler closet" had a litter of 13 infernalis, no still borns, no undeveloped babies. It is a matter of outcrossing and just as important maintaining the proper temperatures to allow the babies to form correctly in the mother. Anyone that breeds live bearers knows its all about temperatures. Just like eggs need to be incubated at certain temperatures, a pregnant female needs to have specific temperatures to properly develop the babies.

[BLUESIRTALIS]

Your right about that i caught a very plump gravid female last year in her late stages of pregnancy that produced 14 slugs and 0 babies so it happens in the wild! I have also had wild garters throw a few stillborns and deformities. I think one reason you see more slugs or stillborns in captive bred litters is because for one on this site we see a lot more captive litters being born. I do agree that there is a lot of things to factor in though like cooling temps and brumation lengths as well as the females body temps while she is producing young. I don't think we will ever know all of the answers though and may do everything right and still get a bad litter or two so at the end of the day all we can do is strive to do everything that we know is right.
fertility issues occur even with wild caught, and they are certainly not unique to garters, or morphs. So richard how many litters have you produced in your "25+" years of breeding garters? Must be at least 25 right?

[snakeman]

I put them in the fridge around the end of august.leave the door cracked about an inch.it stays between 45 and 50 degrees.once it gets cold enough 50 to 55 in the one corner of my basement.I take them out and leave them there I until after christmas.unless they look skinny then i may pull them out early.I think slugs have a lot to do with the male. Some males just never do the job.I hsve a theory that popping them may cause damage.just a theory.over the years I have had a fair amount of snakes that just wouldn't produce.I never attributted it to inbreeding.these morphs have been crossed into all kinds of crap by felzer and myself.good luck finding a blais flame nowadays.

[snakeman]

You could get away with sticking infernalis in a cooler closet.they don't need to brumate like the colder climate sub species do.

[Selkielass]

My wild caught snakes (eastern and t. Butlerii) did not reproduce the year I didn't cool them.
The butlers showed no interest in mating. My eastern threw a bunch of jelly and one stillborn. (My confining clue that her cagemate was actually male, despite its unusually large size.)

I cooled them last winter, but not for anywhere as long as mentioned above. I never observed any courtship, but the girls are looking big. I'm just hoping for some lively young 'uns. I do hope to sucessfully breed Butlers, but even with wild born survivors, there seems to be multiple parts to the equation.

Good luck to everyone.

[Jeff B]

Funny thing is I don't remember ever doing any inbreeding myself (except 1 time), even the pairs of same morph that I have bought before from Scott were always from different females (with the exception of the double het snow red-sideds that produced the first snow). Last several years all of my breedings have been from completely different morphs crossed to each other. Even my checkereds are from different sources. This year I breed 23 females and none of the breeding were even remotely related, completely outcrossed, with the exception of my het green axanthic females (mother was wild caught completely unrelated to wild caught green axanthic father) that were bred back to the original wild caught green axanthic male only in an attempt to prove out a new morph gene, which sometimes that is necessary to initially prove out. I think one of the biggest factor in captive breeding is that the snakes have ZERO choices that they can make as to their real-time environment. Certainly captive conditions are not a one size fits all as these snakes are from different locales and latitudes, not to mention they are all individuals. In the wild they can move if they aren't where they want to be. When people talk like they have it all figured out, it just demonstrates to me how little they know about what they don't know.

[Jeff B]

Tom, thanks for sharing your brumation conditions. That isn't too different from what I do with the exception that you start way earlier in the late summer/fall. Every year is an experiment for me, a little tweak here and there.

[MasSalvaje]

I wouldn't label myself a "breeder" but I do have some experience with breeding garters. I think it is kind of interesting that we often (at least every breeding season it seems like) have this debate of what captive litters are, compared to their wild counterparts. Every possibility in the book is thrown out there as to why there seems to be so many more jellies and stillborn babies in captivity. It may be one cause, it may be a combination of multiple causes, but I find it interesting that the "natural" methods these snakes use to reproduce are rarely brought up. It has been shown in multiple studies that garters are a multiple paternal species. This study,

Multiple Paternity in Wild Populations of the Garter Snake, Thamnophis sirtalis, James M. Schwartz, Gary F. McCracken and Gordon M. Burghardt, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1989), pp. 269-273,

estimates that up to 73% of garter litters exhibit multiple paternity. I don't often hear this as a possible reason for the number of jellies and stillborn babies in captivity. We know that in the wild garters are involved in mating balls; how many of us provide "mating balls" in captivity?

Personally I am still not convinced that there is any greater number of jellies in captive breeding when compared to wild breeding, but if there is I would attribute the overall higher number to the lack of multiple paternal mating. The other reasons many of you have mentioned may be reasons for individual situations, but if I were to paint all garters with a broad brush, I would start with multiple paternity.

The fact is, one of the reasons garters are so successful in the wild is because they have built-in ways to skew percentages of possible problems that may be manifested through simple Mendelian genetics (there is a paper on that as well, I can dig up the source of that if anyone is interested). I don't see it as coincidence that we, for the most part, go against these tendencies by trying to force garters to fit into the mold of simple Mendelian genetics, and then wonder why it doesn't always work.

Just my thoughts.

-Thomas Wilder

[Jeff B]

Thomas I think you bring up a very good point. Scott Felzer told me once that he tries to keep at least 2 males for every female. There was a period where I tried to maximize efficiency by having more females than males, a practice of many other snake species breeders. I have learned (the hard way) that rotating multiple males thru is a better practice. I have been trying to build my male numbers back up the past couple years, but unfortunately the males are the ones that most often die in a long brumation. The other thing I have been trying to do to counteract that is to feed males more heavily in the summer and fall. I am constantly trying to take all these little nuggets and apply them and make mods and do the best I can. This season every one of my females saw multiple males, many saw 4 different males. I think most people that have done much captive breeding of reptiles in general will say that sometimes it seems so easy, other times it seems an impossibility to get it all right every time. It's a lot of fun and anticipation, and when you do produce a nice litter it's a nice reward for all the hard work. Nothing beats opening a tub and seeing all those little eyes looking up at you.

[snakeman]

I have never had a snake die in Brumation.what are your conditions Jeff?

[mike_panic]

Now that makes a ton of sense to me. Good stuff Thomas. Thanks for posting that up. Mike Panichi
I wouldn't label myself a "breeder" but I do have some experience with breeding garters. I think it is kind of interesting that we often (at least every breeding season it seems like) have this debate of what captive litters are, compared to their wild counterparts. Every possibility in the book is thrown out there as to why there seems to be so many more jellies and stillborn babies in captivity. It may be one cause, it may be a combination of multiple causes, but I find it interesting that the "natural" methods these snakes use to reproduce are rarely brought up. It has been shown in multiple studies that garters are a multiple paternal species. This study,

Multiple Paternity in Wild Populations of the Garter Snake, Thamnophis sirtalis, James M. Schwartz, Gary F. McCracken and Gordon M. Burghardt, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1989), pp. 269-273,

estimates that up to 73% of garter litters exhibit multiple paternity. I don't often hear this as a possible reason for the number of jellies and stillborn babies in captivity. We know that in the wild garters are involved in mating balls; how many of us provide "mating balls" in captivity?

Personally I am still not convinced that there is any greater number of jellies in captive breeding when compared to wild breeding, but if there is I would attribute the overall higher number to the lack of multiple paternal mating. The other reasons many of you have mentioned may be reasons for individual situations, but if I were to paint all garters with a broad brush, I would start with multiple paternity.

The fact is, one of the reasons garters are so successful in the wild is because they have built-in ways to skew percentages of possible problems that may be manifested through simple Mendelian genetics (there is a paper on that as well, I can dig up the source of that if anyone is interested). I don't see it as coincidence that we, for the most part, go against these tendencies by trying to force garters to fit into the mold of simple Mendelian genetics, and then wonder why it doesn't always work.

Just my thoughts.

-Thomas Wilder

[ConcinusMan]

So Richard how many litters have you produced in your "25+" years of breeding garters? Must be at least 25 right?

I don't rightly know. Even if I was counting I would have lost count by now.


I think that conditioning and brumations could be a factor.

Seems reasonable. I do realize it's inconclusive but the smallest litter I had (just 7 babies) came from an unbrumated female, which also happened to be my only time getting a litter from an unbrumated female. Brumated the year before, she had 19.

[ConcinusMan]

I have never had a snake die in Brumation.what are your conditions Jeff?

Nor have I, knock on wood, but I have had 2 adult females die within a couple of weeks out. One just never resumed eating and quickly wasted away. The other seemed fine but died just a week out. Since they didn't die during brumation, it could just be a coincidence that they were just brumated. I've brumated babies before and again none died during, but a few died within days of warming up.

[Jeff B]

If a snake dies a week or two out of brumation I consider that as the cause of death. Usually that is what happens, they don't actually die during bruation, but that can happen too.

[ConcinusMan]

snakes use to reproduce are rarely brought up. It has been shown in multiple studies that garters are a multiple paternal species. This study,

Multiple Paternity in Wild Populations of the Garter Snake, Thamnophis sirtalis, James M. Schwartz, Gary F. McCracken and Gordon M. Burghardt, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1989), pp. 269-273,

estimates that up to 73% of garter litters exhibit multiple paternity. I don't often hear this as a possible reason for the number of jellies and stillborn babies in captivity. We know that in the wild garters are involved in mating balls; how many of us provide "mating balls" in captivity?

And which garter almost always the subject of these studies? Yeah that's right, canadian parietalis' and what do the scientists do? Study that one and make it sound like their conclusions apply to all garters. And I got news for you. None of the garters in my area even form mating balls. I hardly consider two males chasing a female a "mating ball" and you sure as heck don't see thousands piled up like you do in manitoba. Yes I know some do have multiple paternity. Northwesterns do, and they can even control when eggs are fertilized. Gestation doesn't have to begin at mating time but I can tell you it always does when it comes to concinnus and once she mates by choosing one male, she doesn't even attract males anymore so it wouldn't make any difference if I let 10 males go at her. She'll only mate with one and the rest quit trying after that. One male is quite enough to fertilize all the eggs she can produce so if you're implying they didn't all get fertilized because one male didn't give her enough sperm well that's just absurd. And just because we see a yolk or a bunch of yolks (or a total slug out) come out doesn't mean it ever had a viable egg with it to be fertilized in the first place.

And Thomas, I've caught I don't know how many wild gravid garters and had them give birth in captivity. Not once have I seen the pathetic slug-outs and/or low numbers we see very often in captivity and I don't think that observation is mere coincidence.

[Selkielass]

We do get mating balls in my area, I have talked to s number of reliable people who have seen them, but ha e not been lucky enough to see one myself.

Theyve been described as softball to football sized masses un the brush next to spillways canals a.d abandoned. Vehicles on farms.
Species would be Eastern, Butlerii or eastern ribbon snake. Observers couldnt idenyify species but those are the available suspects.

[ConcinusMan]

Yeah well the females around here like to keep moving and making 2 or 3 males chase them around to exhaustion for days on end. She doesn't really give them a chance to form a ball. I guess whichever male can keep up in the long run gets the prize. I've just sat and watched them do this for hours. Watch a big female go whizzing by and I'll just sit back and watch a couple of males follow her trail. I really should get video but I'm scared to bring my camera unless I get a waterproof sport model. It's muddy and wet out there.

[MasSalvaje]

And which garter almost always the subject of these studies? Yeah that's right, canadian parietalis' and what do the scientists do? Study that one and make it sound like their conclusions apply to all garters. And I got news for you. None of the garters in my area even form mating balls. I hardly consider two males chasing a female a "mating ball" and you sure as heck don't see thousands piled up like you do in manitoba. Yes I know some do have multiple paternity. Northwesterns do, and they can even control when eggs are fertilized. Gestation doesn't have to begin at mating time but I can tell you it always does when it comes to concinnus and once she mates by choosing one male, she doesn't even attract males anymore so it wouldn't make any difference if I let 10 males go at her. She'll only mate with one and the rest quit trying after that. One male is quite enough to fertilize all the eggs she can produce so if you're implying they didn't all get fertilized because one male didn't give her enough sperm well that's just absurd. And just because we see a yolk or a bunch of yolks (or a total slug out) come out doesn't mean it ever had a viable egg with it to be fertilized in the first place.

And Thomas, I've caught I don't know how many wild gravid garters and had them give birth in captivity. Not once have I seen the pathetic slug-outs and/or low numbers we see very often in captivity and I don't think that observation is mere coincidence.

Richard you need to read the studies before you start trying to poke holes in them. This study had nothing to do with "canandian parietalis", It was done on two different populations of T. sirtalis; one in Michigan and one in Wisconsin. Also here is another study for you to read:

Phylogenetically Widespread Multiple Paternity in New World Natricine Snakes (King et al. 2010)

This study lists T. bulteri, T. elegans, T. sirtalis, T. radix, T. melanogaster, T. sauritus, as well as other species in Storerai, Regina and Nerodia that have all had published studies done to show that they utilize multiple paternity. This is not something that happens occasionally within a single subspecies, multiple paternity occurs regularly across the board in multiple species of Natricines.

I never mentioned anything about the amount of sperm one male can produce or how far it can go, that was your conclusion from the little research you did based on my words and those from the study you obviously did not read. In fact I didn't lead my remarks to any reason as to why multiple paternity would impact the factors being discussed, only that I believe they do have an impact.

Richard I don't mean to discount what you have experienced. You have your experiences and I completely understand why you stand by those. I have had my own however. I have had w/c vagrans throw entire litters of jellies, while I have had captive females throw large healthy litters, but that is just it! There is nothing as far as a published study that has examined the occurrence of full healthy litters in the wild compared to those that occur in captivity; until that happens, all of the debate back and forth in hearsay and I will remain unconvinced.

-Thomas Wilder

[guidofatherof5]

Richard you need to read the studies before you start trying to poke holes in them. This study had nothing to do with "canandian parietalis", It was done on two different populations of T. sirtalis; one in Michigan and one in Wisconsin. Also here is another study for you to read:

Phylogenetically Widespread Multiple Paternity in New World Natricine Snakes (King et al. 2010)

This study lists T. bulteri, T. elegans, T. sirtalis, T. radix, T. melanogaster, T. sauritus, as well as other species in Storerai, Regina and Nerodia that have all had published studies done to show that they utilize multiple paternity. This is not something that happens occasionally within a single subspecies, multiple paternity occurs regularly across the board in multiple species of Natricines.

I never mentioned anything about the amount of sperm one male can produce or how far it can go, that was your conclusion from the little research you did based on my words and those from the study you obviously did not read. In fact I didn't lead my remarks to any reason as to why multiple paternity would impact the factors being discussed, only that I believe they do have an impact.

Richard I don't mean to discount what you have experienced. You have your experiences and I completely understand why you stand by those. I have had my own however. I have had w/c vagrans throw entire litters of jellies, while I have had captive females throw large healthy litters, but that is just it! There is nothing as far as a published study that has examined the occurrence of full healthy litters in the wild compared to those that occur in captivity; until that happens, all of the debate back and forth in hearsay and I will remain unconvinced.

-Thomas Wilder

http://www.herpconbio.org/Volume_5/Issue_1/Wusterbarth_etal_2010.pdf

[MasSalvaje]

http://www.herpconbio.org/Volume_5/Issue_1/Wusterbarth_etal_2010.pdf

Thank you for the link Steve!

I also have to make one correction, I originally included T. melanogaster in the list that had been shown to utilize multiple paternity, however that was a mistake. One littler was tested and that litter was shown not to utilize multiple paternity.

Thanks again Steve,

-Thomas Wilder

[ConcinusMan]

Well Thomas... seems you have put me in my place...

I humbly stand corrected. :D

Just for the record, I only nervously stood by the conclusions I draw from my observations. Secretly hoping someone will challenge them and set me straight. How else is one to learn anything? And to be totally honest I didn't 100% believe my observations could yield any real conclusions in the first place.

Forget about all the arguments I have with Stefan. The only reason I let them drag on so far is because he's a good teacher and I want to exploit that as far as I can because I didn't go far beyond high school and if I were to have these debates in college it would have been much more expensive than membership in this forum.

I would read all those papers but there's too many big words and I'm too busy working and taking care of snakes to bother with it. I'd rather learn from people who have already done the work. It's quicker because I don't have to spend hours learning things that bore me. Only the things that interest me. In this thread, mission accomplished. In short, when I say mindless things I know it, I'm just looking for an intelligent response. I'm using you brainiacs. (that's supposed to be a compliment) LMAO :D