Total nutrition for my garters

[boyer45]

I have read a lot of great posts about what a good diet is for garters but I still have questions. I also thought (maybe?) a new thread would be helpful to get all this info in one place. I have read a couple articles(online) about mice being complete nutrition but I have also read here that mice are just a part and should be supplemented with fish and worms.What is the most complete diet?When should I use calcium or vitamins and how do I mix the right amount?How do I administer them? Do I put it on their food or in their water? Thanks in advance for your help!!:)

[joeysgreen]

The short answer to this question is that we do not know the complete nutritional requirements for garter snakes, or any reptile for that matter. What we do know is what they eat in the wild. In captivity we do our best to recreate this natural diet, whilst making educated guesses to avoid pitfalls (ex. parasites, thiamine deficiency) and to allow compromises (like frozen/thawed mice for convenience).

A good captive diet should not need any vitamin/mineral supplementation. If we know our prey items a likely lacking, then we may want to supplement. For instance, if your garter snake will only eat earthworms, then supplementing calcium might be warranted.


Whole body, vertebrate prey (aka mice, frogs, fish etc) has everything that a vertebrate needs to survive, thus passing it on to the predator. The question is if your predator is able to obtain the nutrition from said prey item. From what we can see, there is no problem with garter snakes digesting and absorbing the nutrients from mice; but this is an anecdotal assumption. A note on neonatal rodents is that because their skeleton is not yet calcified, they may be a calcium deficient diet. Be sure that most of the pinkies offered have a full belly of milk.

There is definitely more to add to this thread to make a complete summary, but this is a start.

[guidofatherof5]

The short answer to this question is that we do not know the complete nutritional requirements for garter snakes, or any reptile for that matter. What we do know is what they eat in the wild. In captivity we do our best to recreate this natural diet, whilst making educated guesses to avoid pitfalls (ex. parasites, thiamine deficiency) and to allow compromises (like frozen/thawed mice for convenience).

A good captive diet should not need any vitamin/mineral supplementation. If we know our prey items a likely lacking, then we may want to supplement. For instance, if your garter snake will only eat earthworms, then supplementing calcium might be warranted.


Whole body, vertebrate prey (aka mice, frogs, fish etc) has everything that a vertebrate needs to survive, thus passing it on to the predator. The question is if your predator is able to obtain the nutrition from said prey item. From what we can see, there is no problem with garter snakes digesting and absorbing the nutrients from mice; but this is an anecdotal assumption. A note on neonatal rodents is that because their skeleton is not yet calcified, they may be a calcium deficient diet. Be sure that most of the pinkies offered have a full belly of milk.

There is definitely more to add to this thread to make a complete summary, but this is a start.

Well put.
Variety offers the best each food has to offer. Much is a guessing game on our part. Nature is really the expert when it comes to what is best, there's a lot we don't know about.

[BUSHSNAKE]

Ive been breeding rodents for feeders for many years and you learn that the diet if your food that your feeding your snake is also VERY important. What goes into the food item goes into your snake

[Rushthezeppelin]

Ive been breeding rodents for feeders for many years and you learn that the diet if your food that your feeding your snake is also VERY important. What goes into the food item goes into your snake

That's what make's nightcrawlers so tricky. They are WC most of the time and you could have drastically varying levels of certain minerals in any given soil you find them in. So you never quite know the mineral content, although you can usually bet that they are packed with vitamins.

[BUSHSNAKE]

That's what make's nightcrawlers so tricky. They are WC most of the time and you could have drastically varying levels of certain minerals in any given soil you find them in. So you never quite know the mineral content, although you can usually bet that they are packed with vitamins.
Maybe gut loading them before offering them as food can be somthing good to get into.

[Rushthezeppelin]

I wonder how you would gutload them, and what with though....hmmm.

[AntTheDestroyer]

Maybe gut loading them before offering them as food can be somthing good to get into.

What would you gut load them with? Garden soil or specific compost mixture? I think parasites would be a concern. I was under the impression mice was considered a complete nutritional meal.

[AntTheDestroyer]

I wonder how you would gutload them, and what with though....hmmm.

Jinx

[BUSHSNAKE]

I wonder how you would gutload them, and what with though....hmmm.

Im sure you can find the answers with a little research

[BUSHSNAKE]

I wonder how you would gutload them, and what with though....hmmm.

Im sure you can find the answers with a little research

[boyer45]

Thanks for all the great information!! I love it!! :)I have one eating small mice and one eating pinkies. Both frozen thawed. I think I will offer some Night Crawlers in between.I hesitate to do fish just because of the problems they can cause.

[Eddie]

I've been using F/T rodents and tap water for many years with good results. I feed babies every 3 days, sub-adults every 5 days and adults every 7 days. As far as gut loading goes I don't think it's necessary but if you wanted to you just inject the prey item with liquid vitamins with a needle and syringe.

[Rushthezeppelin]

I'd stay away from anything that has hair though. It seems garters aren't equipped to handle hair like other snakes that can be put on a rodent diet. It's best to stick to mice pinks then move up to rat pinks if need be.

[mcspin]

I wonder how you would gutload them, and what with though....hmmm.

In the fish raising industry, we commonly gut-load worms for feeding fish. We generally use powdered foods like spirulina algae, astaxanthin, protein powders, etc. Some of these would actually turn the worm the color of the food. It works very well when trying to get different foods into animals that might not normally get much. In the wild, they always get the stomach contents of their prey, which is often very high quality nutrition in itself. I see no reason why this wouldn't work well with snakes. I'm currently feeding lots of live guppies and swordtails to my garters and I always fill the fish's stomach with a high quality food before feeding the fish to the snakes.

[boyer45]

I am worried about the comment about rodent hair. I have only fed my bigger snake one whole mouse so far and can switch back to pinkies. I just hope I have not done any harm.

[slipknot711]

one whole mouse i dont think is the concern. i think its repeated ingestion of the hair. you can also find hairless mice online. but rat pinks are great in place of the mice.

[Qwerty3159]

Agreed. I swear by the rat pinks, luckily I have a store where I can get them in town.